Ecclesiastes 7

Hey guys here is some help and questions to guide us through the verses in ch. 7. Hopefully you can use some of this stuff to start some conversation. There should be one thing if not many, that people can relate to and have conversation about. Be thinking this week what sheperding your group looks like this week. Do you think about that? Remember we are trying to build community in our groups. Make sure you are getting your wives involved to help you out. Some suggestions:

1. You and your wife call people in your group this week and ask them how they are doing this week.
2. Have somebody from your group over to dinner this month and really get to know them and their story.
3. Rally the group to help someone in your group out this month at their house.
4. Pray and encourage each other
5. Make a list of birthdays and anniversarys for your group so you can celebrate and help them celebrate. i.e "Dude I see it is your anniversary this month. What is your plan? Can we take the kids overnight for you ? etc. etc.


Verse 1-
Just like it is better to have a lasting name that conjures images of wise character over fleeting and temporary pleasures, the day of our death is better than the day of our birth.

Psalms 90:12 “So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”

Q: How would you live, if you knew you were never going to die? No matter how much you sinned, no matter what you did to you body, you were not going to die. Do you think you would live different without the threat of death?

I think God was gracious in bringing death as a punishment so that we would seek life in Him. No matter how much money, we will die. No matter how much fame, we will die. No matter how many friends, we will die.
Facing eternity helps us to keep God as the center of our lives by testing to see whether we are more in love with this world than we are with God himself.

Philippians 1:21 “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Paul says, ”to die is gain.” Do we believe that? Do we live in such a way that our lives look as if death is gain for us? Do we live in such a way that speaks of Christ?

Verse 2-
Wise people go to funerals and pay attention. Wise people know the days are few and each day they live is an opportunity to learn and to grow in wisdom and should invest in those things that are most profitable for them. For you and I this should be Christ.

Verse 3-4-
Fools want to laugh at everything. There are times that the wise person must go through times of sorrow and it is better than laughter.

Sorrow will bring to the surface the depth of the delight in God you possess. Sorrow will often produce repentance. But this sorrow should result in sustaining and lasting pleasure since not only do we find pleasure in seeing the glory and mercy of God in Christ, we find pleasure when we repent and sense God’s grace acting upon us to satisfy us, to purge us of pursing other things above Him, and to land us safely into the hands of our Savior. Repentance is sweet sorrow, so that the more of this sorrow we possess, the more pleasure in God that we attain.

Sometimes the only way to receive joy is to go through sorrow and pain. Sometimes the only way we can laugh is when we have come through a painful and sorrowful period of time.

2 Corinthians 7:10 “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.”

Verses 5-6 -
Fools not only stay away from the house of mourning, ignore death, don’t care about their reputation, but also pick friends that are just as foolish if not more so than they.

In the times of Solomon, when they would build a fire, if you placed thorn bushes under the pot, it would flame up quickly and with loud noise, but it would last and would burn out just as quickly as it flared up. So is the counsel of the fool. It is loud, quick, and has no lasting benefit.

If your friends aren’t wise enough to bring you biblical conviction, then perhaps you should examine why you choose to allow them the time attention you do when their counsel does not help.

Verse 7-
Frustration from outside pressure can eventually eat away at the wise man until he becomes mad.

The wisdom that will last for us and that will glorify God, is one that will not be ultimately moved through circumstance or outside pressure. A wise man quickly becomes a fool when he gives way to the hopeless despair of oppression and lives contrary to the wisdom he is given. The way we glorify God in this, is by trusting in Him alone for justice, not our fallen, finite selves, or our fallen judicial system. God is a God of grace, and a God of justice, and he will always be just.

Verse 8-
The end is better because in the beginning, nothing was done. The end of the matter gives a sense of completion, and for our life this shows us that when we start with Christ who is the author and perfector of our faith, we are to see our love for Him and life in Him through to the end of this life and into the next.

When God is neglected, the runner-up god takes his place, namely man. And that, by definition, is the opposite of humility, namely, the haughty spirit called pride.

Verse 9-
Q: What’s the difference between a wise person and a fool when it comes to anger?

It’s not a sin to be angry, but you shouldn’t sin in your anger, some anger is good. But if you are constantly angry for reasons that seem absolutely logical to you but to everyone around you are really silly, then this may be you.A wise person doesn’t easily get angry. They are quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to be angry.

Anger is the strong feeling of displeasure and hostility. I’m not talking about righteous anger. I’m speaking about the kind of anger that is a brawling, quarrelling anger that is unrighteous and ultimately distrusts God’s sovereignty.

Verse 10-
People that believe in the illusion of the past or future being better, are often unable to cope and live in the present. They are disappointed in a time that doesn’t exist. God is in control of history, not you and I. So when we attempt to live without submitting ourselves to that reality, we find ourselves frustrated and unable to find joy and satisfaction in the present day God has given us.

We have a tendency to romantically think about the past as if those former days were better than these. Only a fool thinks that, because only a fool forgets the trouble that was in every day then like there is in every day now. A wise person realizes that they have grown in wisdom over the years and each day is better because they have grown in their understanding of God and can deal with what they weren’t able to yesterday.

Verses 11-12-
We speak so much in our day about knowledge. Yet it is not the acquisition of facts or the ability to rattle off theorems which baffle most untrained minds. It is about the proper application of knowledge that becomes wisdom. What we don’t need is more information, what we need is transformation of our hearts so that we can use what knowledge we have and turn it into wisdom.

Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

The greatest thing that can be said of Jesus’ knowledge is that he knows God perfectly. He knows God perfectly, because He is God. We know God partially and imperfectly. Jesus knows Him like no other being knows Him. No one but Jesus knows the Father completely, at all times, and perfectly. Our knowledge of the Father depends wholly on Jesus’ gracious revelation; our knowing is partial and because of our sin, imperfect.

Verse 13-
We need to be a people that shut our mouths, open our eyes and heart, get on our knees and consider God’s work. Who can thwart God’s hand when He has brought trouble? Who is the only one that can straighten what is bent? God. He is the one that makes things crooked so that in our frustration we cry out to help and throw up our hands and come humbly to Him and ask for His mercy to straighten things out.

Verse 14-
Both prosperity and poverty, sun and rain, happiness and adversity is brought by God who has made the one as well as the other so that man will see that he can’t tell the future and, in realizing he can’t fix life, in realizing that he can’t tell the future, God did all these things so that we turn to Him.

Verse 15-
Don’t have a Christianized Karma theology. In other words, adopt a view that only religious people live long and smooth lives, and only wicked people live short and painful lives.

Karma Christians talk constantly about how to avoid pain, how to avoid poverty, how to avoid suffering, how to avoid disappointment, how to avoid failure, and guess how you avoid it? By being perfectly righteous just like them!

Verse 16-
Solomon is not saying don’t be righteous and don’t be wise since he has already commended righteousness and wisdom in this book. What Solomon is saying, is to stay away from excessive righteousness that becomes about self and not God, and to stay away from an excessive wisdom that puffs up the individual instead of humbles them.

Religious fools are always self-righteous, and religious fools always know everything. They can’t help it because it’s not about the glory of God found in Christ, it’s about their glory found in themselves. We become the standard of goodness instead of Jesus, and we become the standard of wisdom and truth instead of Jesus.

Verse 17-
Don’t be wicked and hide behind stupidity. Don’t do things that you know are wrong and then say “is that wrong?”

Verse 18-
Don’t be so extreme in everything you do. Instead, fear God.

How many of you know someone that has been extreme all their life, and now they’re a Christian and guess what? They’re extreme! Solomon says that you should fear God and you will avoid extremes.

Why? Because someone who fears God walks very carefully and moves thoughtfully and prays deeply and reads widely and is careful not to go to extremes.

C.S. Lewis says “Heresy is truth taken too far.” Extreme people do extreme and unbiblical things.

Verse 19-
Don’t make power more important that wisdom.

Why do we believe in a plurality of elders? It’s because we always want to make the final decision and the only way to combat that is to have more than one elder that we are accountable to.

Verse 20-
Don’t act as if you don’t sin! A person who lacks true wisdom, is a person who never confesses sin, and does not see themselves as sinners.

Someone who is wise is careful to watch out for hypocrisy in their own life.

Verses 21-22-
People who are self-absorbed and obsessed with what other people think and say about them are almost always miserable people.

Solomon’s advice is to not take these things too seriously. His motivation is to remind you about your own sin.
Since you are guilty of speaking poorly of someone, don’t get your bent out of shape if someone speaks poorly of you. Someone that is truly wise, will consider the source of information that is negative, and not take it too seriously if it is only gossip.

Verses 23-25-
Don’t expect to know everything about God and life.

Isaiah 55:8-9 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. 9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.

The beauty of good Biblical theology is the realization that I will never know as much as the God who made me, and that is comforting. If you are truly wise, you will not try to fit God into your system.

We do not stand upon the bible and critique it, we are critiqued by it. We don’t put God under a microscope. We widen our lens and look through a telescope to see how magnificent He is.

Verse 26-
Don’t pursue and marry a woman who is unwise and ungodly.

A wise man realizes that his wisdom is proven by the woman he chooses. If he is wise in every other area of his life, but is foolish in that area, he will be captured and enslaved to her foolishness.