Get Over Yourself

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Good, well if you take your copy of God’s word this morning and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter seven, King Solomon was wise, we have talked about that, the wisest guy who has ever lived at any point in time apart from a man who was also God that being Jesus. Solomon had more wisdom than anybody before him and than anybody after him that was God’s blessing and gift to Solomon, that’s God’s own commentary on how much wisdom Solomon had. And yet, for all of his wisdom, as we read through the book of Ecclesiastes, we see that Solomon is very frustrated at what he sees concerning life under the sun. We might even say that at least in Ecclesiastes, Solomon is kind of disillusioned. His expectations for what he hoped to find under the sun were not really ever met. He’s the embodiment of the truth in Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verse 18. Look back at that just for a moment. I love this verse.

Ecclesiastes 1, 18, For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. When you get to see the underbelly, that’s a phrase that Mr. Jim Martin uses a lot to talk about church ministry and sometimes you look at ministry from a certain angle it looks all pretty and gleamy but then you get up to it it’s kind of like the fish on the shore and it looks really glimmery and shiny and then you get up to it and you turn it over it’s got like maggots eating at it and it’s totally falling apart that’s the underbelly and the more wisdom and knowledge you have about life the more you see of it, and the more you experience, the more likely it is that you’re going to be frustrated by what you see, and disappointed by it. And Solomon, again, is the embodiment of that truth in chapter 1, verse 18. And you can sense his frustration, his frustrated experience as he introduces a new section in chapter 7, verse 15. In my vain life, I have seen everything in my vain, my empty, my meaningless life. It’s that Hebrew

word habel which we’ve talked about so much which is a dominant chorus repeated all the way through Ecclesiastes. Habel, habelim, hakol, habel, vanity, a vanities, all is vanity. And now he even says his own life is vain. It is empty. It is meaningless. Now in the The first half of chapter 7, in Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verses 1 through 14, he has taught us about demanding and difficult times.

He teaches us at the first part of chapter 7 about how adversity, how trials, difficulties, suffering, pain, unmet expectations, how all of those things can end up being a great advantage to us if that adversity causes us to do what? To look to God. If you are experiencing great difficulties, there can be a beautiful benefit about that. If it causes you to turn your eyes away from all of the junk and expecting to find satisfaction here under the sun, if it causes you to look to God, those adversities can then be of great advantage to us. And really, Solomon is answering the question that he asks as a rhetorical question back in chapter 6 verse 12. You can look at that. Who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life which he passes like a shadow. Who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun? What’s good for a man? And he goes right out of asking that question at the end of chapter 6 into this discussion on adversity. And I suggested, I think that

the connection there between what is good for a man in his few days of vain life under the sun. What is good for a man is God. What is good for man is not all the temporal blessings and money and women and entertainment like he pursued back in Chapter 2. What is good for a man is God. And that’s why as he moves into Chapter 7 and he’s talking about all these difficult things, lessons that we learn from death, lessons that we learn from being rebuked and corrected, lessons that we learn from other kinds of chronic struggles. He’s saying that those things clarify what is really good in life. What is really good in life is having God, and if those trials and troubles point us back to God, then they are an advantage to us. So in verses 1 through 14, things don’t always go as we expect, and that should cause us to stop acting independently, and then cause us to trust God. Things don’t always go as we expect, so stop acting like you’re in control, and instead trust God. That’s really good. Now, in the second part of chapter 7, especially verses 15 through 22, and

And then next week as we look at 23 through 29, Solomon’s going to tell us that not only do things not always go as we expect, things don’t always go as we think we deserve. Things don’t always go as we think we deserve, and that ought to cause us to stop being proud, to loosen up a little bit, and to fear God. It goes with the title for the message this morning, which is the council to get over yourself.

don’t always go like we think we deserve. The most important thing we can learn from that experience is to get over ourselves. To stop thinking that it’s all about us and we deserve better and we don’t deserve to be treated in that particular way. And we’ll see that counsel as Solomon teaches us this advice for life. That’s really what we find in verses 15 through 29, advice for life, especially in a world where there is so little virtue, there is so little uprightness, people treating one another poorly every time you look around. Life is ugly. People are ugly, and by that I don’t mean just looking at them in the mirror. I mean, their hearts are ugly. They treat one another in an unacceptable, fair man or most of the time. And Solomon has multiple pieces of counsel for us. We’re going to look at two, the first two pieces of advice, the first two counsels for life in dealing with those kind of ugly people in this ugly world. Number one, in verses 15 through 18, Solomon’s first piece of advice is, enjoy life with God-fearing.

a life with God-fearing. Look at verses 15-18. 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 evil doing. Be not overly righteous and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time. 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.” If you’re feeling like that’s really confusing and what in the world is Solomon talking about, then you’re just like I was at the beginning of the week. In fact, lots of Ecclesiastes is tough to figure out and hopefully I have figured it out enough to be able to help all of us understand what it is that Solomon’s saying, but I think there’s some really excellent counsel here if we can get it. In verse 15 he tells us, the problem observed. Remember we’re saying that the counsel for this section is, enjoy life with God-fearing, but what’s

the problem? Why do we need that counsel? Verse 15 is the problem observed. In verse 15 Solomon picks up his observation and experience that things don’t always work out like we think. In fact, many times, just the opposite of what we’re expecting and certainly the opposite of what we think we deserve happens. Look again at the last part of verse 15.

There’s a righteous man who you would think gets to live long. But that’s not what Solomon says. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness. And there is a wicked man. And again, we would expect that what the wicked man deserves is to die soon, to die early. Selma said that’s exactly not what happens here either. There is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil doing. And especially to us religious folk. I think in particular to us, those who are connected with church and Christian school and Bible teaching and those kinds of things, that does not seem fair. That the righteous dies early and the wicked man gets to go on being wicked. In fact, not only does it not seem fair, but it actually seems in many ways to go against the Old Testament and really the biblical expectation that the righteous have life and the wicked lose life. Typically we see in the Old Testament, especially in wisdom literature, that when you live a righteous life then you are blessed.

God blesses you and often times that was associated with long life. You live righteously, God blesses you, you’re pleasing God and so he gives you long life. And typically we also see that the wicked will not get blessing, they’ll get what? Cursing. And in being cursed, that is typically associated with then loss of life. Sometimes the good die young though, and sometimes the bad keep getting to be bad. Experience tells us, no matter what our expectation is, experience tells us that it doesn’t always work out like we think people deserve. And you know, for a lot of people, that’s a problem. For a lot of people that’s an issue that it doesn’t seem like people are getting what they deserve.

And there are at least two, I think, typical responses, ways to react to that fact, that people don’t always get what they deserve. The first type of responder basically says this, that the righteous man who perished early probably was not as righteous as he needed to be. In fact, if the righteous man was really righteous, he wouldn’t have died. And so I just need to avoid everything that even has the appearance of worldliness. I’m going to set, this is the first responder, I’m going to set myself so far apart from everything under the sun that God will have to be pleased with me and therefore give me a long life.

I’m going to be ultra-righteous, super-righteous. This group figures that the safest way to sail is to never let the boat leave the shore. And so, hey of course, I’m going to be okay if I don’t even get out in the water. The second type of person responds with the polar opposite response. They don’t make any preparations at all before shoving offshore. They just get going and they say, if good people die young and the wicked get to party on, then let’s party on. If it doesn’t really matter, being righteous is not really something that means I’m going to be blessed or I’m going to have long life, then might as well just party on and live it up while I have opportunity to do that.

I can totally see Solomon having interaction with both of those groups of people. As King, the kind of people who he would have had interactions with, I can totally imagine the super serious pious religious people, and I can totally imagine that Solomon had lots of interaction with just the worst of the worst and the ultimate pagan partiers. There’s no doubt he had connections with both of those types of people with both of those responses to seeing what seems like an undeserving thing in life. The problem observed is that sometimes we don’t get or that people don’t get what we think they deserve, but verses 16 and 17 spell out these two wrong responses.

So verse 15 is the problem observed. Verses 16 and 17 are the wrong responses. Some counsel to avoid those wrong responses. Verse 16, be not overly righteous and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Verse 17, be not overly wicked neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? And there are probably not surprisingly, I mean it shouldn’t be surprising, but there are a number of people, not just scholars, commentators, various interpreters who have written about this passage, but I think in life, there are a lot of people who see Solomon here calling us to the ethic of the middle. You just kind of be in the middle. Don’t get too crazy on either side. Don’t go too extreme. You gotta be balanced.

When have you heard that before? You just gotta be balanced. And so it seems like, these people would say, don’t be too good and just don’t be too bad and then you’ll be alright. So just be a little righteous. And then ultimately, we would have to say, if you say just be a little righteous, then you also have to say don’t be too bad. You can be a little good and a little bad, and that’s the best way to go. Just don’t be a fanatic. Don’t go to extremes. Just relax. Do whatever you want. Obviously in verse 17, then Psalm is saying don’t go to excesses in your evil either, But I mean, hey, a little sin never hurt anybody, right?

That’s how a lot of people take these verses. They take Solomon to be saying, just go to the middle. But I’ve got to tell you, no matter how frustrated Solomon may be with the fact that people don’t seem to get what they deserve, no matter how frustrated he is with that, I don’t think that there is any way at all that what he’s just telling us is, so do both. Be kind of good and kind of bad. I don’t think that that works in the Bible, and I don’t think that works even in this paragraph. And so let me give you five reasons why I think that saying, just go to the middle, be a little good and a little bad, is exactly not what Solomon is telling us to do.

So five reasons. The first three come right from the paragraph itself. The last two are kind of thinking about the context of the Bible overall. So, number one, these are again reasons why Solomon is not saying, just take the middle road and be a little of both. Number one, the variance with verse 15. Who dies in verse 15? The righteous man. But what does he say in verse 16? Does he say, don’t be righteous? No, he says don’t be overly righteous or too wise. I don’t think that that’s then referring to the same thing. There is a difference between being righteous and being overly righteous. And all throughout the book, even though he’s talked about the fact that wisdom has a relative value, namely the fact that even if you have all the wisdom there is, you’re still going to die.

So wisdom is better, but wisdom still can’t keep you from dying. But he never says, so don’t be too wise, like you can have too much of a good thing of wisdom. He just says that has a relative value. And so, I don’t think he’s saying that you can be genuinely righteous too much, or genuinely wise too much. In fact, even the, and this is just important so that you know it, the Hebrew tense for the words too wise, don’t make yourself too wise, the Hebrew tense is often times used with other verbs to talk about playing that certain thing. So for example, in Numbers, chapter 16 verse 13 it talks about playing the prince.

In 2 Samuel 13, verse 5, it talks about a guy pretending to be sick. And I think that what we have here is Solomon talking about not being overly righteous, that is overly genuinely righteous. I think he’s talking about being a play actor in your righteousness or in your wisdom.

pretending or showing righteousness as a pretense. Acting, not actually being too righteous, but acting super righteous. And I think that that’s again important. So the variance with verse 15. In verse 15 he says the righteous. In verse 16 he says the overly righteous and the too wise. There’s some difference there. A second reason is the disconnect with destruction at the end of verse 16. The question at the end of verse 16 wonders why would you destroy yourself. Obviously suggesting that whatever this means to be overly righteous and to be too wise leads to destruction. Well, there is nothing anywhere that says when you are genuinely righteous that leads to destruction. Because even in verse 15 it doesn’t say that But if you are righteous, you will die early.

It just says that sometimes that happens. Sometimes that happens, but it’s not a certain cause and effect kind of thing. Every righteous person doesn’t die early. So I don’t think that he’s trying to say that if you are genuinely, certainly righteous, that you’re guaranteed to die young. Again, we know that that is not the truth that we see all throughout the rest of Scripture, alone in life. I mean, what would that age cutoff be? If you live longer than, you know, whatever it is, you live longer than 30 and you apparently are not really righteous. Because we know that the really righteous die young. I mean, what would that look like?

So I don’t think that makes sense with that disconnect with destruction near at the end.

ever posturing yourself as a righteous person is really dangerous. Because not only does posturing yourself as a really righteous person make you miserable in this life because you don’t get to enjoy some of the good things that God gives us, but ultimately it is a poison because it makes you guilty before God. Because God is never happy with the righteousness that we produce ever. He says our righteousness is as what? Filthy rags. So you try to play a righteous person and make yourself the righteous one, well then that is leading to destruction. Makes your life miserable now and leads to destruction and punishment in future life. So that’s the second reason. The third reason, and this is probably the biggest one from the paragraph, why I don’t think that Solomon is saying you can be too genuinely righteous or too too genuinely wise, is because he contrasts the righteous person and the wicked person with the one who fears God. Look at verse 18. It is good that you should take hold of this and from that with holding out your hand for the one who fears God shall come

out from both of them. The God-ferer is being contrasted with both types of people, with both responding groups. The God-fear then is not just opposite of the wicked and the fool. The God-fear is also opposite of this overly righteous and this too wise person. Maybe you can think about it like a triangle. So obviously, across from each other you can have the wicked and the righteous, or in this case the wicked and the overly righteous, But different than both of those is the God-fearr. The God-fearr is not wicked or pursuing foolishness, but the God-fear is also not the overly righteous or the two wise.

Well, that has a major problem, saying that the God-fearr is different from a genuinely righteous person because all throughout Scripture there is a connection of righteousness and righteous living with fearing God, and there is certainly a connection between wisdom and the fear of God because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So he can’t be saying that fearing God is great, but that’s different than being genuinely wise and genuinely righteous. But you can say that fearing God is different than playing super spiritual, And that fearing God is different than acting like a know-it-all, so far as being too wise.

Those are the three reasons that I think that come from the context, but just two more things to think about. As you think about the context of the Bible, can a person actually be overly righteous? Just think about that for a second. If righteousness is on a sliding scale, from totally unrighteous to ultimately righteous, Who is on the end of the Ultimately Righteous side? Who would that be? Jesus, God, yeah.

So does that mean that that’s bad for God? Because he’s the ultimate standard of righteousness, so he would have to be the overly righteous one because he’s at the ultimate end of that side of the scale. So does that mean God is wrong? Or maybe does that mean that there’s a different standard of righteousness for God and humans. Well, nowhere else in the Bible does it say that. It says God’s standard of righteousness is the standard He expects of us and that nobody ever gets up to that. I mean, what are we saying? So there’s a percentage of righteousness that’s okay, but then if you go over that percentage as a human of righteousness, that’s just, that’s wrong? You’ve gone so far around the roundabout in pursuit of righteousness, without knowing it, you actually turned unrighteous again. So again, that doesn’t really make any sense. You can’t be too overly, genuinely righteous. You are either then outrightious in God, righteousness in God, which you can’t do, or there’s a different standard, and that’s just not found in the Bible.

And then let me ask you this, lastly, in Scripture is a little wickedness, okay? Can you think of anywhere that says, okay, human nature is wicked, so we know that everybody has that in them, so a little bit of it is alright. We understand. That’s just how you’re going to be. Just don’t go too far. Well, like I say, nowhere in Scripture do we find anything like that. In fact, any sin at all causes us to be guilty of sin. It causes us to be guilty of disobeying the whole law. James 2.10, when you stumble in just one part, you become guilty of all. So there’s no little sin that is okay with God. There’s no amount of righteousness, genuine righteousness, that is too much for God. You can’t outright just righteousness, God. That’s just not a possibility. And so I think when Solomon is advising against being overly righteous and being too wise, he is speaking sarcastically about self-righteousness.

There’s the answer. He is speaking sarcastically about being self-righteous. There’s a perfect word to describe the kind of person, verse 16. I just came across it. It’s the word Prig. I had to look it up. I saw it in a commentary. The guy didn’t explain it. I looked it up. Beautiful word to describe the kind of attitude and response that Solomon is sarcastically speaking about in verse 16. Prig, a self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if they’re superior to others. I couldn’t have made up a word with that definition to be better. Prig, a self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if they’re superior to others.

We have our own ways of talking about those kind of people, don’t we? The holier-than-thou Christian. Or the know-it-all Christian. The isolationist Christian. The one who can’t even touch or enjoy any kind of thing at all under the sun because, ooh, that’s not righteous. God’s not going to like that. Better distance ourselves from that. I don’t know, it seems like Jesus had some regular interactions with these super-spiritual, ultra-righteous religious people all the time. But it isn’t that they were genuinely righteous or on a higher plane of righteousness, but they thought that they were and then looked down on everybody else.

You know what? It’s the same exact type of person that we find in Job’s three friends.

Job’s three friends had a theology that said, if you are suffering at all, that’s your fault, you must not be righteous enough.” They had no ability to comprehend the idea that a genuinely righteous person could die young. They would say, that’s a sign of God’s cursing, that’s a sign of God’s punishment, and therefore, the person must just not have been righteous enough. That’s what they criticized Job. It must be your fault. You are not righteous enough. You’ve done something wrong.” They arrogantly assumed that because they weren’t suffering, that God was pleased with their righteousness, and wasn’t that exactly the opposite? God was displeased with their counsel from their self-righteous perspective, and instead he was actually really pleased with Job, who he was allowing to suffer to show off to Satan how pleased he was with Job. So even though Job was the one who was suffering, God was most pleased with Job and was displeased most with the self-righteous counselors that came to give advice to Job from their perspective. So speaking against

being overly righteous is a sarcastic reference to being wrongly righteous or to being self-righteous. The idea of self-righteousness is going to come up again all the way through the end of verse 29. We’ll see it obviously here in verse 16. We see it in verse 20. Because there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. Nobody is that good. Down in verse 22, it’s proven that nobody is good because we curse people all the time ourselves. In verses 28 and 29, Solomon says he’s looking for those virtuous, righteous people. He says, I found one guy in a thousand. I didn’t find any girls. God has made man to be upright, but they have all gone their own ways.

Nobody can claim this self-righteous position, this self-righteous stance, because they’re just not. And we have both groups of people among us and around us. So get this advice. Some people think that by making themselves so miserable and avoiding any possible joy under the sun, that God will be happy with them. They are the isolationists. They are the ones who avoid any appearance of getting any enjoyment out of anything under the sun because they’re afraid that then they won’t be righteous enough and then God God is going to be unhappy with them. They think that in order to please God, they need to reject God’s gifts.

And that somehow in rejecting all of the stuff that they see here, that that will make God happy with them. And in the process, they miss out on joy now. They miss out on some of the blessings of this life that God lets us enjoy. And ultimately, they are destroying themselves. That self-righteous spirit is a poison. It’s toxic. It impacts your attitude in life now. And ultimately, taking self-righteousness into your eternity is going to lead to ultimate and final destruction because God is not pleased with whatever righteousness we think we have. The counsel is get over yourself. Stop taking yourself and your righteousness so seriously.

Because you’re not that righteous. Stop acting like it and stop treating other people bad who don’t meet up to your standard of righteousness. You’re not perfect either. Get over yourself.

In verse 17, the second wrong response, and this will be a little bit faster, but Solomon addresses the other group, and he is not advocating moderated sinfulness or balanced unrighteousness. That’s not what he is saying is okay. These are the people who take God’s gifts and who try to get everything in life under the sun that they possibly can that causes them to ignore God. And Solomon says, that’s not the route to go either. What you have is self-righteousness, avoid that, and avoid unrighteousness. Avoid acting like God doesn’t care and you can just do whatever you want. Because by the way, you will sell what you reap. And if you get crazy, this is the thing. Some people think because God is not immediately coming down and little bunny-fu-fu picking them up, bopping them on the head every time that they sin, they think that they’re getting away with their pursuit of unrighteousness of wickedness. And so sometimes that encourages them to go even further. God must not care. God must be okay with this. Besides which, I mean the

righteous people die young anyway and the wicked people oftentimes get to go on, so I’m just going to do whatever I want. That’s the wrong approach. And if you get too crazy, you might actually reap an early death as a wicked person, and I mean, who can come up with the number of different ways that that’s possible from driving your car too fast to drugs to who you hang out with, every other possible thing you can imagine. The point is that we need to enjoy life with God-fearing, and that brings us to the right response in verse 18. We’ve seen the problem. People don’t always get what we think that they deserve.

We saw the wrong responses to that. Here’s the right response. Verse 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. This is the third corner of the triangle. The third point. Don’t be self-righteous. Don’t be unrighteous. Instead, be a God-ferer. How does God-fearing? Fearing God help you to avoid both of those things. Well, it helps you to avoid self-righteousness because when you fear God and you have a proper understanding of who He is, you realize your righteousness stinks. It isn’t any good. So, fearing God helps you to avoid self-righteousness. At the same time, fearing God helps you avoid unrighteousness because you realize He does have a standard and He is paying attention and He will bring what you do into judgment.

The idea then is to fear God and to enjoy what He gives us as blessings, as benefits under the sun, but we’re unable to enjoy what He gives us under the sun because we’re looking to the one beyond the sun. I think that this is just a foreshadowing of what He says in Ecclesiastes chapter 11. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter 11 verse 9. Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of of your youth, walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things, God will bring you into judgment. Enjoy life. Enjoy the process under the Son, but do that fearing God, recognizing you might not get what you think you deserve.

You can still enjoy that because you have God. And even if all that you get under the the Son is empty and meaningless, you still have God and you’ll have Him for eternity. God-fearers enjoy the gifts of God because they are concerned with God. They don’t deny themselves pleasure, but they also don’t make pleasure their God. That’s so big. I have to think about how to put that into practice almost every day. To think about playing for keeps. Playing for keeps is actually the perfect description of this whole thing. Playing for keeps is enjoying the idea of playing playfulness, enjoying having some fun, but realizing that what you’re doing has lasting consequences.

exactly this idea of enjoying life with God-fearing. Go to the game, tailgate, and just mow on those bratwurst cooked on open flame. And then the next day, fast, and don’t eat at all to remind yourself that ultimately you’re more satisfied in God than the bratwurst. Love it up on the Brought Verse and realize that that’s a gift from God to enjoy and if you make that your God you’re gonna be really upset and disappointed in the future. Not only because you’re gonna be big and fat you’re gonna have pork sausage lodged in your heart but because ultimately that doesn’t last. So enjoy what God gives us. Enjoy life with God fearing. Okay second piece of advice verses 19 through 22. Get wisdom with humility. Get wisdom with humility verses 19 through 22. Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than 10 rulers who are in a city. Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. Do not take to heart all the things that people say lest you hear your servant cursing you, your heart knows that many times you

have yourself cursed others.” You know, it’s amazing how many people think that all of these verses throughout chapter 7 are just disconnected and thrown in there. They think that about the beginning part of chapter 7, even though I’ve argued that I think that they all are lessons for life and the advantage of verse day as it points us back to God, but I as well think that there are some connections as we keep reading through the last part of chapter 7 in this advice for life. And verse 19 starts off with the established standard. This is a, it’s kind of like a proverb, it’s a universal saying or statement of truth. Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than 10 rulers who are in the city. We typically think about government officials, people in high levels of political office as having power, as having influence.

And Solomon says that just one person, and the implication is this is a person who has no earthly position necessarily, just one person with wisdom can’t have more power and influence than these ten government leaders who are in positions of power. Solomon says wisdom is way better than any of that. Wisdom is a powerful thing of all the people who could know that. Solomon is the one with that experience. And like I said earlier, even though wisdom has relative value in that it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to live forever, still wisdom is better than foolishness. God Himself places high priority on wisdom and the Bible is full of its advantage.

But you know what? There is a tendency for those who recognize that wisdom is powerful. There is a tendency for, again, those of us, Christianese, religious, churchy kind of people. There’s a tendency to think that you can get so much wisdom, that you’re going to have so much power and influence, that you don’t need to be humble anymore because you have all this wisdom.

have somehow attained to this wonderful standard of wisdom that makes you superior to all these other people. Not only do you have more power and influence than those government officials, but you are actually more valuable than they are. Well, the flip side is in verse 20, the established standard verse 19, but the flip side is found in verse 20. This is connected with, I think, in Solomon’s mind, it’s the flip side to the truth that wisdom is such a powerful and influential thing. Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. It is really good to get wisdom, yes, but some people are actually better at getting knowledge and thinking that they’re getting wisdom than getting genuine wisdom which also includes humility. Wisdom apart from humility is annoying.

Maybe the other way to say that is wisdom without love. Knowledge without love is a clanging symbol. Wisdom without humility is not actually that beneficial. Those persons tend to get a little big for their britches. They start acting like they are exceptional and they start treating other people like they don’t match up. That’s exactly the kind of person Solomon was referring to a few verses earlier in verse 16, the two why’s. Yes, wisdom is good, but get over yourself. You may have wisdom, that’s an awesome thing, that may bring you certain levels of influence and power, but you’re still a sinner. Look again at verse 20, there’s not a righteous man on earth who does good.

That’s talking about sins of omission. Everybody is not always doing good every time that they have opportunity. You commit sins of omission and you have sins of commission in that never sins. You sin like you do what you’re not supposed to do and you don’t always do what you’re supposed to do. Everybody’s covered. This is a universal statement, a universal truth. It’s emphatic with that surely there is not a righteous man and axiomatic. It’s everywhere on earth. We know a verse like all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We know plenty of other verses that confirm what we see here. Every person on the planet is covered by this statement.

You are included in that, by the way. So get over yourself. Get wisdom. Yes, but do that with humility, which brings us to the case study in verses 21 and 22. Verses 21 and 22 give us a specific illustration, a case example, a case study of the truth in verses 19 and 20. Verse 21, do not take to heart all the things that people say lest you hear your servant cursing you. heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others. And I get a lot of opportunity to think about this. You’ve heard me say before, the higher up the flagpole you are, the more your rear sticks out. And what I mean by that is, the more leadership and the more public your ministry or your life is, the more people are looking at you, the more people would like to pull you down and the more people are going to notice your flaws.

Your rear. That sticks out more the higher up the flagpole you are. And forever, just practically in my own life, for however high up and rear sticking out my life is, you You, you would not, you don’t want to be me in the sense of how many times it comes to my attention that people don’t like something I did or something that I said. I’m just using myself as an example less of how great I am but more of how much I need to make sure that I’m responding to that in humility. Because the same is true for you. The same is true for you. No matter what position in life you’re in, you undoubtedly hear that other people have talked bad about you.

They have gossiped about you. They had said something about you that isn’t true, that probably they know isn’t true, or they have repeated something about you that they heard from somebody else. That kind of thing happens all the time, especially if you’re a junior high girl. The point is, every one of us has a lot of opportunity to put this into practice. Now what do you need in those kinds of situations? You need two things. You need wisdom and humility. You need wisdom to get over yourself. It is not surprising that people criticize and talk bad. As Solomon is about ready to say in the verses that follow, he’s found no virtuous or righteous person.

And he just said there is no one on earth who does good all the time and never since. There isn’t anybody like that. So you need wisdom to not be surprised when people criticize. When people gossip about you and slander about you, whether it’s true or not. You need wisdom. You know what else you need? need some humility to realize you’ve done that too. Not just that it’s typical practice. It’s probably typical practice for you, as you like to talk about other people. I mean, and we all know how to do that better as we share prayer requests for this particular person. Whereas we’re just needing counsel. I’m only telling you this about this other person and how awful they are, because I just need counsel on how to deal with them.

The fact is, we do it too. Solomon says, your heart knows. That’s a way to refer to the conscience. The principle in verse 22 is very similar to the, he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone. How many people picked up a stone at that point in time to throw it when Jesus said that? Zero, because they knew that they themselves were not without sin. It isn’t saying that sin isn’t serious. It isn’t saying that we shouldn’t respond at times to various things and various opportunities, but it is saying don’t act like you’re above others sinning against you or that you haven’t sinned yourself. Be humble and wise in dealing with people in those kinds of situations.

Realize sometimes the best way to get rid of a zit is to just let it alone. And you’re thinking, wow, he’s really hip on how high schoolers are talking. Actually we were talking about that in elders prayer this morning before first service. In dealing with this kind of situation where there’s gossip and back-bidey slander taking place. Sometimes you make it worse by going after it. Sometimes the best way to go is just to let it go. This is not the same thing as saying, have thick skin. That’s not the principle Solomon is saying. It’s not saying just buck up and have thick skin and don’t let it bother you, it’s saying, be humble, you have done it yourself. It’s foolish to be surprised because everyone’s a sinner. It’s foolish to act self-righteous because you are one of the everyone sinners. As I finish up this point, let me just give a couple really practical and quick statements of advice like this.

get over yourself and drop the drama. Do you want me to give the head thing with the snaps? Get over yourself and stop acting like the world has come to a halt from spinning on its axis because someone has said something bad about you. Relax. They’re probably saying way worse things about you than you heard. So I mean, it’s okay. They’re sinners and so are you. So loosen up. You are not perfect. Stop treating other people with the standard that’s higher than you yourself are living up to. Be wise, do that with humility. Some people are ready to start practicing the Matthew 18 church discipline process on anything that moves. Confront, confront, confront, confront, confront. Sometimes love covers a multitude of sins. That doesn’t mean that sin shouldn’t be dealt with, it means that Jesus is dealing with the sin, either when he paid the penalty for it on the cross or when he judges them in the future. And that’s not necessarily our job to take vengeance on all of those people who are treating us poorly. Talking

about us in ways that we don’t like, that we think we don’t deserve. You know what? You deserve to be talked bad about. Because you’re bad. If people think you’ve done stupid stuff, the high likelihood is you just did something stupid and that’s why they’re talking about it. One of the things especially it seems like with students that they don’t get is you know I just don’t understand why people are talking about me like that because I did this thing and I want to say if you don’t want them to talk about that at least start with not doing it. Like maybe then if they’re lying that’s another thing but if you’ve done it It’s even less surprising. Is it right for them to do that? No. But is it surprising?

No. And are you perfect? No. Get over yourself. Don’t be over-righteous and don’t be over-reactive. Fear God. Enjoy life. Get wisdom and be humble. You will enjoy your life a lot better than running around as the gossip about you police trying to press charges against everybody who is saying anything kind of negative about you. Father help us do that. I mean we need your help to do that. We need the wisdom to do that and we don’t have the humility to do it. But that is so much what we need and ultimately even as we talked about in the first part of the message we also need to just fear you. Stop acting like being Super righteous guarantees us something or makes us worthy of your pleasure.

Help us also to avoid the other extreme of then just doing whatever we want. Help us to fear you and again to enjoy life as you give that to us. Getting wisdom, living with great wisdom in humility, recognizing that all the good gifts are things we don’t deserve anyway. Help us do that for your glory’s sake we pray. Amen.