Somewhat of a confusing passage for me today. Ecclesiastes 2:12-14 says, “Then I turned myself to consider wisdom and madness and folly…Then I saw that wisdom excels folly…The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.”
That all sounds good and normal (biblically-speaking), but the end of verse fourteen ushers in a change of thought: “Yet I myself perceived that the same event happens to them all.”
For today I thought it would be appropriate to just receive a reminder of Biblical love- God’s love. Immediately I went to 1 John 4. I love this chapter and reading, studying, and meditating on it never grows old.
To keep from writing out a sermon, I’m going to focus on verses 7-11 even though I read the whole chapter:
Wow…I can really identify with a couple things in today’s passage. Verses 1-2 say, “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure’; but surely, this also was vanity. I said of laughter
So Solomon “set [his] heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven” (1:13). Remember that Solomon was the wisest mortal to walk the earth.
II Chronicles 1 tells the story of how God gave Solomon all his wisdom: “And Solomon went up there to the bronze altar before the LORD, which was at the tabernacle of meeting, and offered a thousand burnt offerings on it. On that night God appeared to Solomon, and said to him, ‘Ask! What shall I give you?'”
As I read through this passage, a few things stuck out to me:
v.5- “The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose.” It’s so true that the sun almost seems to move from one side of the sky as quickly as it possibly can. We wake up and not much longer, we’re back in bed. We wake up again, and not long after we find ourselves asleep again. The days go by so fast that we don’t have time to stop and watch them pass. We must actively make the most we can of the little time we have for God’s glory.
Wisdom for life is best given at the end of one’s life. With age comes experience and with experience comes wisdom. Hence the value of the book of Ecclesiastes. Writing about life as his own came to a close, Solomon expresses the virtues of a life well-spent and the vanity of a life wasted.
Last week I was given the opportunity to give a devotional to the lower level of my dorm here at Faith Baptist Bible College. During my time here at school, I have really been challenged with the importance of using time wisely and redeeming it as Paul exhorted Christians to do in Ephesians 5:15-16. So the topic of my devo last week was using time wisely, and my text was Ecclesiastes 12:9-14. After studying the passage and talking about it to the guys here, I was challenged to read through the book of Ecclesiastes for my daily devotions.
All right…so the next time you feel burdened down with your load of sins, iHave the perfect solution for you (no pun intended, but since I left it, I guess it becomes intentional). iThink you just might like this…Actually, iDidn’t come up with this solution but iAm referring you to it. Introducing (drum roll please) the new confession app for the iPhone, appropriately named “Confession: A Roman Catholic App“. That’s right. If you sin, you can go straight to your iPhone to take care of your problem and entirely bypass any other system. Bye-bye confession booths- you have gone out of style.
Not the average goal for a born-again believer, huh? But why not? It’s a worthy goal on second thought, is it not?
Perhaps an explanation would be helpful here before you entirely tune me out. Proverbs 29:27 says, “An unjust man is an abomination to the righteous, and he who is upright in the way is an abomination to the wicked” (NKJV). Does that clear up any confusion you might have had?
After reading this verse in my personal devotions with God one day, I thought to myself, “I want to be an abomination!” Of course, I want to be an abomination of the latter sort- “an abomination to the wicked.” Oh may I never be “an abomination to the righteous.” Those are the ones whom I wanted to be counted among.
For the past several months, I have been working on memorizing the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5-7. It has been slow going, but I’m learning from it, thus fulfilling the main objective. As I meditate on the significance of Proverbs 29:27, I can’t help but also think of Matthew 5:11-12 which says, “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before me” (NKJV).
My desire is not to go around and to make everyone hate me, but rather to be so much like Christ and so much unlike the world that the world doesn’t like it. If Christ is repulsive to sinful mankind then I want the same to be true of me. At the same time, I want to be an abomination in such a way that the unsaved see their own sinful condition and the abomination that they are to God.
The bottom line? “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2, NKJV).
God, make me an abomination to the wicked so that I may expose others to your glory.
What should I write about next? Are there issues that you are facing or that the church is facing today that need to be addressed? Take 15 seconds to let me know!
