What He Has Made Crooked
Download MP3Hear these words from Ecclesiastes 7 and 9. A good name is better than precious ointment in the day of death than the day of birth. 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. Sorrow is better than laughter for by sadness of face. The heart is made glad.
Speaker 1:The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. 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. Consider the work of God Who can make straight what He has made crooked? In the day of prosperity, be joyful.
Speaker 1: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. 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. All this I have tested by wisdom.
Speaker 1:I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me. That which has been is far off and deep, very deep. Who can find it out? And from Ecclesiastes 9, again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge. But time and chance happen to them all.
Speaker 1:This is the word of the Lord.
Speaker 2:Pray with me. How great and how unsearchable is your wisdom, oh god. Your ways are not like our ways. They are infinitely higher. God, heaven and earth may pass away, but your word will never pass away.
Speaker 2:The flower fades. The grass withers, but your word abides forever. Lord, we are here because we are hungry, and we pray that you would feed us according to your word. I have nothing to offer these men and these women apart from your truth. And so we ask about the power of your spirit in grace and in kindness, you would teach us according to your word.
Speaker 2:That as Abigail prayed, ultimately, we pray that you would help us to see Jesus this morning, who he is, what he has done, what that means, and our lord, what you have promised us. So speak, we pray, in the name of the father, son, and holy spirit. Amen. Before we really get started this morning, I just wanna say thank you to those of you who have reached out over the last few weeks to check-in on my son. Praise the Lord.
Speaker 2:He is doing quite well, and looks like every everything is gonna be quite okay. If you don't know what I'm talking about, we really hope that you enjoyed the lake 2 weeks ago. Right? My son had an injury with a baseball, got hit in the back of the head, but is a okay? That's it.
Speaker 2:I feel like this week, I had written my favorite introduction to a sermon I have ever written, only to realize on Thursday morning that it was no longer going to fit. And so it's just gonna sit on my computer for my own enjoyment and no one else's. And if that doesn't scream of Ecclesiastes, I don't know what will. Thursday night, I went to a party, and I started tossing out ideas for another intro, in case you wanted to know how fun I am at parties. And it was about the TV show Lost, and there was a guy there who told me that if I said what I said I was going to say, he was gonna stand up and start booing me during the sermon.
Speaker 2:Little did he know that his boos would only make me stronger. But that that intro also didn't work. So I'm going to borrow an analogy as an illustration from Rebecca McLaughlin, but I'm gonna start it with a story of my own. So, during college, 1 summer, I worked out in Montana and my family flew out to visit me. I've got mom and dad and a little sister, Catherine.
Speaker 2:I had never read Harry Potter, but my sister was absolutely obsessed and book 6 had just come out. She had gotten it and then flown on the plane to Montana. Now, as I said, I knew nothing about Harry Potter. I knew Harry Potter's name and I knew one other character, Dumbledore. So she gets there and I look at her, and in absolute cruelty, I say, oh, I hear that Dumbledore dies.
Speaker 2:I knew nothing. Right? I just made it up to be a jerk. And she looks at me and she says, if that happens, I am going to kill you. Sure enough, in case you don't know, in book 6, Dumbledore dies.
Speaker 2:Thankfully, I am not dead, obviously, started reading Harry Potter. And if you haven't started reading Harry Potter. And if you haven't read it, they're fantastic, and I'm about to ruin all of it for you. So close your ears, but then again, you've had 20 years, that's on you. Right?
Speaker 2:Book 6, there is this crucial moment where Dumbledore, who has been the embodiment of everything good in the world, he finds himself trapped in the astronomy tower surrounded by evil lord Voldemort's men. It looks like evil is going to triumph. Evil will have the last word. Dumbledore has no hope and he turns to one of his fellow professors, Snape. And in a moment of desperation, he says, Severus, please.
Speaker 2:Now Harry Potter is hiding underneath his invisibility cloak. He's watching everything that is happening in this scene. And for 5 and a half books, Dumbledore has been trying to convince Harry that Snape is a good guy, that he can be trusted. But in this moment, it seems like Harry's worst fears are going to be realized, and Dumbledore was wrong all along because Snape turns and he coldly kills Dumbledore, and all hope is lost. But the moment of evil's greatest seeming triumph is actually the moment that seals evil's ultimate defeat Because we didn't yet know the end of the story, or what was really happening in that moment.
Speaker 2:Only later do we really understand the depths of the sacrifice that Snape was making in that moment. Because later, as he lays dying, he invites Harry to see his memories, and we see Harry looking at Snape's unrequited, unquenched love for Harry's mother. We see the moment where Dumbledore tells Snape that he is dying from an uncurable curse and where they plot out together Dumbledore's death so that Voldemort would trust Snape, and therefore evil would be defeated. Wisdom. We're gonna talk about wisdom this morning and what use wisdom is in a world that so often makes so little sense, where it so often looks like evil is winning and suffering is senseless.
Speaker 2:And my prayer for you and my prayer for me this week has been that we would be freed from having to know or trying to understand what God is doing in any given moment and come to rest and trust in what he has done and what he will do, trusting that he is good and he is the king. Now last summer, we walked through the book of Proverbs as a church, one of the Bible's books of wisdom. And if you read Proverbs, Proverbs tends to give the impression that if you seek wisdom, if you seek to live a righteous life, if you fear God, then things will generally go well for you. And if you make foolish choices, or if you live an unrighteous life, then things will go badly for you. Simple enough.
Speaker 2:But for every if then statement of Proverbs, it's almost like the preacher of Ecclesiastes raises his hand, and he says, I have so many objections, your honor. I wouldn't even know where to begin. And one of the delights, throughout history, both of these books have largely been attributed to King Solomon. So you can imagine, sort of, Proverbs on one shoulder, Ecclesiastes on the other, going back and forth. But, why did Solomon not write one book?
Speaker 2:Because these two lenses of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, side by side, are almost like binoculars. Each book rings true to our experience some of the time, but a combined book giving the average of the 2 would resonate with our experience none of the time. The Bible is much more profound and beautiful and wise than we could ever imagine. Now there are verses in Ecclesiastes, right, that would feel very much at home in the book of Proverbs. Let's look back again at verse 1 of chapter 7.
Speaker 2:A good name is better than precious ointment. The preacher is telling us, let's not spend so much time worrying about our appearance. Instead, what is more important than appearance? Your character. A good name and a good reputation.
Speaker 2:This is an adage that would feel as home As at home in our Sunday school classroom as it would slapped up on a poster in your elementary school. Right? We know that this is true, and yet, it's so hard to live out. Turn to verses 11 and 12. Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun.
Speaker 2:For the protection What is wisdom? Wisdom includes knowledge, but it's much greater than knowledge. Wisdom includes good moral character, but it's more than that as well. Wisdom recognizes that much of life, if not most of life, is not simply matters of right and wrong. It's knowing what to do when the rules don't apply.
Speaker 2:It's using the best means to the best ends, and what the preacher is saying here is that wisdom, like money, is a very useful tool in this life. Wisdom may recognize that though Monty Python Monty Python's knights who say, nie I already started the analogy. I gotta finish it even though I immediately regret it. May ask you to chop down a tree with a herring, wisdom would recognize that is foolish and at best case, would take a very long time. That's getting cut from the next service.
Speaker 2:Wisdom recognizes and reorients us to the reality that there are better and worse ways to live our lives. There are more wise or more foolish ways to live. There are wise and foolish ways to steward your money, to run a business, to run a race, to date and to marry, to raise your kids, or to take care of your body. But then the preacher of Ecclesiastes says, even the best laid plans of mice and men go awry. Chapter 9 verse 11.
Speaker 2:Again, I saw that under the sun, the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. Sure. He says wisdom is a useful tool in this life, but just look at the world. What do you see? You see a natural world that is completely indifferent to your existence.
Speaker 2:You see a world that existed long before you were around, and it's going to continue long after you're gone. You see, you may make your best plans, but time and chance happen to us all. You and I, we have absolutely no control. So sure, be wise and steward your money well, but recognize and reorient your life around the reality that the market may crash, that your accountant, your business partner may be stealing from you. Remember that you may lose your job at any moment, time, and chance.
Speaker 2:Sure. Use wisdom and work hard at your job, but remember that riches don't always go to the intelligent nor favor to those who have knowledge. It turns out your hard work, it may never pay off. Someone else may get credit for your very best idea. Someone less qualified might get that job or the promotion you've been looking for.
Speaker 2:Sure. Use wisdom to wisely plan for the future as long as you remember that you have no idea what tomorrow may bring. You are a mist that appears for just a little while and then vanishes, and any sense of control that you have over your life is nothing but an illusion. Sure. Date wisely and love your family well, but recognize that living wisely and loving well is no guarantee that you will have a good marriage, that your marriage will survive, that your kids will grow up wise or healthy or won't resent you or that they will even love Jesus.
Speaker 2:Sure. A good name is better than precious ointment, but you cannot control what your reputation will be. Sure. Work hard and maybe leave a legacy for those behind. But best case scenario, you slap your name up on a building, and that building will crumble, or they will slap someone else's name in place of yours.
Speaker 2:I mean, just think over the last few years of how many monuments we've seen taken down, how many debates we have heard about what should or should not be in history books. I'm not gonna comment on the politics of all of that. I just want us to recognize and wrestle with this question. Do you really think you have any control of what people will say about you or think about you once you are gone if they say anything or think about you at all? No.
Speaker 2:814. There is a vanity that takes place on earth that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. Evil and injustice run rampant under the sun, and the wicked often prosper, while the wise and righteous often suffer. As Joel reminded us a few weeks ago, John the Baptist, whom Jesus himself said was the greatest of all men, had his head chopped off.
Speaker 2:Joseph Stalin, when he died, there was a line over 5 miles long for people to come and see him in state. Living a righteous life is no guarantee that you will meet a good end or be well remembered. Living an unrighteous or wicked life is no guarantee that you will meet a bad end or be poorly remembered. Sure. Work hard for the lord.
Speaker 2:Go to church and pray, But that is no guarantee that your prayers will be answered or that you may not watch the work that you did for the lord go up in flames, or that you may not be betrayed for something you did or did not do, or that you may not watch your leaders fail you. You see, wisdom is an advantage in this life, but it is not magic. Wisdom does not mean that you get to control the future and bend it to your will. Instead, the preacher tells us that wisdom recognizes and reorients us to the reality that you are you and I are absolutely not in control. We never have been, and we never will be.
Speaker 2:Time and chance happen to us all. Trying to control the future is like trying to hold on to water in your hands. You may have a little bit of it in there for a second, but eventually, it all runs out. Sure. Eat your vegetables.
Speaker 2:Get plenty of exercise and sleep, and don't forget to floss. But one day, you will die. Back to 71. The day of death is better than the day of birth. It's 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.
Speaker 2:Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face, the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Why does the preacher tell us that sorrow is better than laughter, especially since he has commended so much joy? Why would he say that the day of death is better than the day of birth? Because it sobers us.
Speaker 2:It reminds us of our end. That the wise person dies just like the fool, the strong just like the weak, the beautiful just like the ugly, man and woman just like the beast of the field. Do not all go to the same place. Wisdom recognizes and reorients us to the reality that one day, you and I will be put in the ground. And it may be later today, or tomorrow, or decades from now, and none of us have any clue whatsoever.
Speaker 2:Verse 13 of chapter 7. Consider the work of God. Who can make straight what he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity, be joyful. As Joel shared a few weeks ago when he was preaching about death, chapter 9 verse 7 says, go eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.
Speaker 2:If you know that you are going to die, how do you receive this call? You go and you eat while you still have breath in your lungs and you celebrate the good things that God has given. Giving thanks to the giver of all good gifts. Don't waste a moment and don't just eat and drink. Eat your bread with joy and drink with a glad heart.
Speaker 2:Understand that you cannot rightly enjoy anything in this world unless you understand that it is meant to point you to the one who gives it to you. Unless you do not look to these things for what they could never provide. So in the day of prosperity, be joyful. And yet, in the day of adversity, consider that God has made the one as well as the other so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. You see, in suffering, had a lot of friends walk away from the faith over the years because they looked at what was happening in the world, or they looked what was happening in their lives, and they concluded that life was a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Speaker 2:If there was no one in charge, how could there possibly be? Maybe you've heard met well meaning Christians instead say, well, god didn't let that happen. Satan did that, or evil did that. And that may sound for a moment like it's letting god off the hook, but if god's not in charge, what hope do you have in suffering? And the preacher of Ecclesiastes, he says, you wanna know who's in charge of this world.
Speaker 2:Right? You wanna know who has the day of prosperity and the day of adversity in his hands? It's god. God is in charge every single moment. So it's not just that this world is incomprehensible and doesn't make sense, It's that God is incomprehensible and doesn't always make sense.
Speaker 2:Who can understand the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor? God is in heaven, and we are on earth. And he does as he pleases in heaven and on earth. The lot may be cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the lord. Time and chance are not just random.
Speaker 2:They're in his hands. Now the Bible is absolutely clear, and I wanna be perfectly clear, That God is absolutely holy and he cannot sin, nor does he compel anyone to sin. And yet, there is evil and suffering and sorrow in this world that God has inexplicably to us decisively chosen not to stop, even though it is absolutely within his power and right to do so. Tish Harrison Warren in her excellent book, prayer in the night, says, the circumstantial evidence for God's goodness is divided. There is beauty in this world, and there is horror.
Speaker 2:And if the question of whether God is real or not, or of whether God is kind or indifferent is determined solely by the balance of joy and sorrow in our own lives or in the world, we will never be able to say anything about who God is or what God is like. If the story of my short life and feelings determine God's character, then he seems Jekyll and Hyde. And maybe you had thought like I have thought or hoped at least that God would keep bad things from happening to you, that it was somehow his job to do so. And, of course, the truth is is that God does keep many bad things from happening to us. I mean, we don't know all the ways that we've been spared some misery in this life.
Speaker 2:Accidents that didn't happen. Destructive relationships that we never began. The way that our white blood cells may even right now be fighting a disease we never knew that we had. But either you are walking through confusing suffering and pain and sorrow right now, or one day, you absolutely will. You're going to have to wrestle with and wonder where god is, why he doesn't act, or why he seems to do the exact opposite of what you requested, why everything seems to go wrong, you're going to ask why your most precious dreams and hope burst like bubbles never to return.
Speaker 2:I think one of the greatest dangers in American Christianity today is that we love we love, love, love to hear the testimonies of how God has come through. Right? And I praise god that we don't only share those here at Redeemer. We love to hear the stories about how we prayed and the cancer went away. We prayed and marriages were restored.
Speaker 2:We ran out of money. We put everything that we had in the offering, and later that week, totally unexpected, a check came in the mail for that exact amount. And let me say clearly, God does that. But is god any less god when the cancer comes back? Is he any less god when our marriage doesn't survive?
Speaker 2:We pray for that child and the child never comes or never seems to come to faith. The preacher of Ecclesiastes says, he has made the day of joy and the day of adversity. Who can make straight what god has made crooked? What do we do when we start to walk through an open door that looks like it was an answer to prayer, only for it to be closed in our face? Who is god to us then?
Speaker 2:You see, in the book of Job, we get a glimpse behind the curtain, and it's as clear as it is confusing. Right? Job has incredible suffering, and Satan is the one who acts upon Job. But what does he do first? He comes and he asks God for permission.
Speaker 2:So does god harm Job? No. But does Satan harm Job purely of his own accord? No. And does Job ever get the answers to the questions that he is asking?
Speaker 2:No. Instead, god asks him where he was when he, God, laid the world's foundation. God holds your best days and your worst days in a sovereign hands, and he does not keep all bad things from happening to us. He cannot be trusted to do that, because he never made that promise. Isaiah 55 says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the lord.
Speaker 2:For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Wisdom painfully recognizes and reorients our lives to the reality that god's work and god's ways are infinitely beyond us and often incomprehensible to us. No one can make straight what god has made crooked, and god's plans cannot be thwarted any more than they can be understood. And in response to all of this, the preacher says in chapter 8 verses 16 and 17, when I applied my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, How neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep. And I saw all the work of god that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun.
Speaker 2:However, much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out. Wisdom, you see, can give us the illusion of having some control, but the preacher tells us the more wisdom I gained, the more that I knew, the more I realized I did not know. The more I came to understand, the more I came to understand how little I would actually understand. Wisdom remains far beyond us.
Speaker 2:That we can scale the heights of human knowledge and still have absolutely no clue what will happen to us by breakfast time tomorrow. There's this beautiful moment in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where little Susan comes up and asks mister Beaver about Aslan the lion. You may know this story. Right? Susan says, I I thought he was a man.
Speaker 2:Is he is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion. And mister Beaver says, safe. Who said anything about safe? No.
Speaker 2:He is not safe. He is good, and he is the king. And when we look at sin and evil and suffering in this world or in our own lives, so often, so little makes sense. So much of the world seems to be Snape killing Dumbledore. Our god is not safe, but he is good, and he is the king.
Speaker 2:And how do we know? Because on the cross, the unthinkable sovereign wisdom of God is revealed. Because the cross looks like good's final failure and defeat. It's the moment when Jesus, the embodiment of all that is good, is surrounded by enemies who have finally killed him. It looks like evil has the last word, but Jesus cries out with his last words, it is finished.
Speaker 2:And in those moments when evil thought it had triumphed, Satan, sin, death, evil, their destruction was assured forever. If wisdom consistent choosing the best means to the best ends, then in the crooked wisdom of God, here stands the cross of Christ. It shows us a universe that is not ruled by mere time and chance, but is in the hands of the unimaginably wise and unimaginably loving God. And while you and I may never understand what God is doing in any particular moment, the cross frees us from having to understand, from having to try to be in control. Because in the crooked wisdom of the cross of Christ, we understand understand once and for all that no matter what comes in our lives, it cannot be that he is not in control or that he is not loving.
Speaker 2:Because God leveraged all of his power and his glory and his wisdom and love. And that moment when the only perfectly innocent one suffered willingly on our behalf. He is not safe, and he will not always explain himself to us. But He is good, and our good king planned this crooked plan of redemption from before the foundation of the world. So let us not judge the world by what we can understand or judge the lord by feeble sense, but instead trust him for his grace.
Speaker 2:For behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face. Romans 828 tells us that all things work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. What that verse doesn't say is that all things are good. All things are not good. Some things are evil and awful, and Jesus came to destroy them.
Speaker 2:But what that verse does tell us is that god is weaving all things together for an unimaginable good, for a joy unspeakable and full of glory. In the end, true wisdom results in true faith, a humble faith know that he is in control and he cares for us. Because we know what he has done for us and what he has promised to do. In this world, people will betray you. Things will fail you.
Speaker 2:And everyone you know and love will die. Dreams don't come true, but Jesus reigns, and he is unimaginably wise and good. And we know how this story ends. Right? And we will be with him one day again, and he will wipe every single tear from every single eye.
Speaker 2:And though in this world, we will have tribulation, Jesus has told us to take heart because he has overcome the world. As Julian of Norwich famously said, all shall be well. All shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well. And if it is not well, that only means that it is not the end.
Speaker 2:The lord is not slow to fulfill his promises as some count slowness. But as Isaac Adams reminded us here on Wednesday night, God may not show up when you want him to, but he is always on time. So let us go to him now, our good and gracious and wise king. Our father, I know that there are many brothers and sisters in this room walking through intense sorrow and confusion, and I pray that they would bring all of their grief, bring all of their sorrow, bring all of their selves before you. Confessing all of those things to you, I pray that you would bring them to that place where they can trust that you are good and that you are the king, that you will see them through to the end.
Speaker 2:You will bring us to our heavenly home, where we will be with you forever. We love you. We trust you. We pray these things in Christ precious name. Amen.
