Latest / Reformed Thinking / Beyond the Illusion of Perfection: Total Depravity, Sinful Schemes, and the Sufficiency of Christ (Ecclesiastes 7:15-29)

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Beyond the Illusion of Perfection: Total Depravity, Sinful Schemes, and the Sufficiency of Christ (Ecclesiastes 7:15-29) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to reformed thinking. I want you to picture a man who,
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  well, he literally has it all. And I am not talking about some
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  modern tech, a billionaire with a couple of yachts and, you
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  know, a social media platform. I am talking about an ancient
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  king. Right.
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  A king with wealth that we can barely comprehend today.
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  Yeah, a guy who possessed wealth so staggering that silver was
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  treated like common gravel in his capital city.
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  This man had absolute political authority.
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  He had peace on all his borders, which was unheard of.
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  He had this massive fleet of ships bringing in exotic goods
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  from the very edges of the known world.
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  And it wasn't just the money, either.
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  No, not at all. Kings and Queens would travel
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  for months across brutal, torching deserts just to sit in
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  his throne room and listen to him speak.
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  His intellect was unmatched and he even had something no amount
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  of money could buy which was direct, visible encounters with
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  the creator of the universe. God actually spoke to him twice.
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  Yeah, he built the most magnificent temple the world had
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  ever seen. He was, I mean he was at the
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  absolute zenith of human achievement.
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  He was the absolute pinnacle. You were describing a man who
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  experienced the highest conceivable summit of earthly
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  success, intellectual brilliance and spiritual privilege.
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  He lacked absolutely nothing. But then you Fast forward a few
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  decades. The gold is still there, the
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  palace is still there, but the man is completely broken.
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  He is sitting in his royal halls, old, exhausted and just
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  filled with bitter regret because he compromised
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  everything. He really did.
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  He married hundreds of women to secure political alliances.
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  Right. And to keep them happy, he
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  started building altars to foreign gods.
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  And we're not talking about harmless little garden statues
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  either. He built altars to gods that
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  demanded the horrific sacrifice of children in the fire.
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  The wisest man to ever live became a spectacular,
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  catastrophic fool. From that dark, suffocating
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  place of regret, he picks up his pen to write a letter to the
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  world. And that brings us to the source
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  material for our deep dive today.
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  Today we're opening up a text that just rips the mask off of
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  human pretending. We are looking at Ecclesiastes
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  Chapter 7, verses 15 through 29. It is a heavy text, but a
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  necessary one. It really is.
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  We are pulling from some extensive theological notes and
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  sermon excerpts that breakdown these ancient words.
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  Our mission for this deep dive is to dismantle the illusion of
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  human perfection. We are going to strip away that
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  blinding trap of self righteousness and investigate
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  the severe but liberating grace of humble wisdom.
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  Which is something we all desperately need to hear.
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  Definitely. So we will unpack what it means
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  for you to live in a fleeting world under the sun without
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  wasting your breath trying to pretend you are flawless.
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  Because Solomon learned the hard way that life is broken.
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  So let's look at the historical backdrop here.
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  Well, the book of Ecclesiastes is basically an uncompromising
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  autopsy of human nature. It strips away all the
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  comforting illusions we build around ourselves.
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  We are looking at the theological autobiography of
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  King Solomon in his twilight years.
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  So this isn't just theory for him.
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  Not at all. To grasp what are you saying in
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  Chapter 7, we have to understand the trajectory you just
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  described. This is not some abstract
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  philosopher sitting in an ivory tower hypothesizing about the
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  meaning of life over a cup of tea.
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  This is the agonizing confession of a backslidden king who drank
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  the cup of earthly pleasure and human ambition down to the very
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  dregs, only to find, well, nothing but bitter sediment to
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  the bottom. And he uses a very specific
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  Hebrew word to describe that frustration.
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  No, the word for vanity, right? Yes, the word is hevel.
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  People often translate it as vanity or meaninglessness, but a
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  more accurate physical description is vapor or breath.
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  Vapor. So like temporary?
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  Yeah, think of stepping outside on a freezing winter morning and
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  seeing your breath hang in the air for a second.
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  If you try to reach out and grab it, your hand closes on
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  absolutely nothing. That is Heavil.
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  It is elusive, transient, and incredibly frustrating.
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  Wow. Solomon looked at all his
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  accomplishments, his wives, his wealth, his vast intellect, and
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  realized he was just trying to grab smoke.
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  It is kind of like, imagine a wildly successful tech founder
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  writing a tell all memoir. OK, yeah, they built this
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  massive empire, crushed their competitors, acquired more money
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  than they could spend in 1000 lifetimes, but they totally ruin
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  their family and compromise their soul to get there.
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  Now they are retired, sitting in some empty giant mansion,
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  writing back to the rest of us, saying look, do not make my
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  mistakes, the view up here is completely empty.
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  That captures the tone perfectly.
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  Solomon is writing from a post fall perspective.
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  He is reflecting on humanity's fall in the Garden Eden shore,
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  but he's also writing from the fresh wreckage of his own
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  devastating personal fall. Which gives it so much more
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  weight for the listener. Absolutely.
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  We also have to place this within a specific cultural
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  epoch. He is writing to the covenant
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  community of Israel and they are surrounded by the Pagan wisdom
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  traditions of Egypt and Mesopotamia.
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  And those traditions were very different from biblical wisdom.
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  Night and day, those surrounding cultures operated on a strict
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  transactional system. Their wisdom literature
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  essentially promised that if you performed the right moral
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  actions and, you know, recited the right magical incantations,
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  the gods were obligated to give you success.
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  Like a cosmic vending machine, you put in the good behavior
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  coin and out pops the prosperous life.
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  That is a great way to put it. The Pagan worldview demanded
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  that the universe function like a predictable, fair machine.
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  Solomon contrast that transactional Pagan wisdom with
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  true biblical wisdom. He was operating under the
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  administration of the Mosaic Covenant.
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  The Law of Moses. Yes, and the Law of Moses
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  demanded perfect, perpetual and personal obedience to God.
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  Solomon, in his old age, is demonstrating that this standard
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  is entirely impossible for fallen humanity to achieve.
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  He's documenting the absolute failure of the human king to be
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  the ultimate deliverer for God's people.
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  Because he himself failed so miserably.
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  Exactly this failure points toward the desperate, crying
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  need for a greater son of David who will not fail.
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  So because Solomon has lived this failure, he begins the
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  specific section in Chapter 7 by pointing out a massive anomaly.
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  He observes something in the moral universe that completely
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  shatters our human expectations of fairness.
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  It is a harsh reality check. Let's look at what he says in
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  verses 15 through 18. He says he has seen righteous
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  people perishing in their righteousness and wicked people
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  living long lives in their wickedness.
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  He identifies A horrifying anomaly that destroys simplistic
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  retribution theology. Retribution theology.
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  That is the idea that good people always win and bad people
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  always lose, right? Right.
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  It is the assumption that good behavior results in an
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  immediately painless life, and bad behavior results in
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  immediate visible suffering. We see this flawed logic
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  everywhere today. Oh.
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  Absolutely. Think of prosperity gospel
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  preachers. They tell their audiences that
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  if they have enough faith and live a clean life, God will
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  guarantee them a big house, perfect health and unending
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  happiness. Which?
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  Is such a dangerous message. It is, they claim, that if you
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  were suffering from cancer or poverty, well, you must have
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  some secret unconfessed sin holding back God's blessing.
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  That mindset is incredibly cruel to people who are genuinely
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  suffering. I mean it adds a massive layer
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  of guilt on top of their physical or emotional pain.
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  You are sick and on top of that it is supposedly your fault for
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  not having enough faith. It is cruel and according to
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  Solomon, it is objectively false.
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  Solomon looks out at the world under the sun and declares that
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  the universe does not always operate on that neat, clean
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  Ledger system in this present age, right?
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  It is messy. Very messy.
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  Sometimes the most upright person in the city gets a
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  terminal illness at age 30, while the corrupt, cheating
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  politician lives a life of luxury and dies peacefully in
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  his sleep at age 90. I feel like we all intuitively
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  know this. We see it on the news everyday,
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  but it's still really bothers us.
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  We want the world to be fair. We want the bad guys to get
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  their comeuppance and the good guys to win in the end it.
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  Is human nature to crave that justice?
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  But because of this anomaly, Solomon issues a command that
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  sounds totally counterintuitive, He says.
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  Do not be overly righteous and do not make yourself too wise.
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  Which is a shocking thing to hear in the Bible.
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  It really is. I have to stop right there and
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  struggle with this for a minute on behalf of anyone listening
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  who might be confused. I grew up thinking the entire
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  goal of faith was to be as good as moral and as righteous as
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  humanly possible. How can a person possibly be
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  overly righteous? Is Solomon telling us to just
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  lower our standards and be mediocre?
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  No, no, that tension you were feeling is intentional.
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  Solomon is absolutely not handing out a divine permission
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  slip for moderate sinfulness. That would contradict the entire
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  rest of the biblical ethic. Right, that wouldn't make any
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  sense. Instead, he is launching A
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  targeted surgical strike against Farrah Cycle Pride.
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  He is attacking legalism. To be overly righteous in this
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  context is to be righteous in your own eyes is the arrogant
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  attempt to manipulate God through hyperpiety.
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  Breakdown what that kind of legalism looks like in everyday
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  life for you and me. Give me a concrete example.
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  OK, it looks like pressing way beyond the boundaries of God's
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  actual commands and inventing new severe rules for yourself.
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  And then here's the key holding everyone else to those
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  artificial standards. Ah, judging others based on
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  rules you made-up. Yes, but more than that, it is
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  the internal belief that your strict moral discipline puts God
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  in your debt. A person acting overly righteous
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  believes they have backed God into a corner.
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  Like they hold the leverage. Precisely, they think, well, I
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  read my Bible for two hours every morning, I give 20% of my
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  income away, and I never associate with bad people.
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  Therefore, God owes me a promotion at work.
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  My children must turn out Florida State and I should never
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  experience a serious illness. So they're turning God into a
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  business partner who is bound by a contract they wrote
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  themselves. They are manufacturing their own
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  righteousness as a bargaining chip.
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  And Solomon is warning that this mindset will completely destroy
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  you. Why?
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  Because the anomaly is going to happen anyway, yes.
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  Because the anomaly will eventually hit your life.
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  You will suffer despite your good behavior.
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  And when you do, if your faith is built on your own
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  manufactured righteousness, it will collapse into raging
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  bitterness. You will feel cheated.
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  You will shake your fist at heaven and accuse God of
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  breaking the contract. You will feel betrayed, not
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  realizing that God never signed your contract in the first
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  place. Wow, that explains so much about
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  why some very religious people become the most bitter, angry
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  individuals when tragedy strikes.
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  Their whole system is built on an illusion of control.
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  But Solomon balances this warning right.
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  He does not just go after the legalists.
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  No, he immediately warns against the exact opposite extreme.
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  He says do not be overly wicked and do not be a fool.
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  Why should you die before your time?
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  So he shuts down antinomianism. Right Antinomianism is the idea
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  of living without any moral law or restraint.
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  It is reckless sin. Some people look out and see
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  that the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer, and they
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  conclude that nothing matters at all.
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  They embrace complete nihilism. They say if the good guy guy is
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  young anyway, I might as well lie, cheat, steal and indulge
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  every desire I have. They just throw their hands up
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  and dive into the mud. And Solomon says that is a
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  guaranteed path to an early grave.
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  Reckless folly destroys a society, and it destroys the
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  individual. The safe path through these twin
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  hazards, the hazard of arrogant legalism on one side and the
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  hazard of reckless rebellion on the other, is the fear of God.
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  The fear of God, yes. A person who fears God,
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  recognizes their own limitations, submits to God's
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  sovereign wisdom, and trusts Him even when the moral universe
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  appears totally upside down. So, having warned US against the
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  pride of our own manufactured righteousness, Solomon decides
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  to take a scalpel to our internal condition.
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  He's about to show us why relying on our own moral record
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  is a guaranteed path to destruction.
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  This takes us into verses 19 through 22 where he deals with
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  the reality of our internal depravity.
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  He begins this movement by affirming that true wisdom does
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  have real value. He says that wisdom provides
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  more strength for a wise man than 10 rulers who are in a
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  city. Yes, in antiquity, a city ruled
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  by a council of 10 elders or 10 military commanders was
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  considered incredibly secure. So Solomon is saying that
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  possessing biblical wisdom offers more security resilience
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  than massive political and military alliances.
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  That makes sense. I mean good judgement will keep
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  you out of a lot of unnecessary trouble.
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  But then right after saying that he drops a massive theological
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  anvil. In verse 20 he says surely there
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  is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
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  It is a devastating theological axiom.
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  I want to pause here because the source knows emphasized that the
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  the structure of the original language tells a huge story
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  breakdown what is happening in the Hebrew syntax for us.
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  The Hebrew text here is fascinating and devastating.
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  It uses an absolute negation. The phrase begins with the
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  emphatic particle key, which translates to four or Shirley.
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  The core assertion is on Sadiq Barrett, meaning there is no
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  righteous man on the earth. But the most revealing part is
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  the descriptive phrase that follows Asher Yaset Tovillo
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  Yechetta, which means who does good and does not sin.
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  And the word for sin there is what?
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  The verb for sin, chatta, literally means to miss the
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  mark. The text juxtaposes doing good
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  with the absolute negation, low meaning not or never, combined
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  with the imperfect verb yechetta.
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  So what does that specific grammatical combination actually
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  imply for us, like in plain English?
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  It implies that even in our best, most charitable, most good
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  actions, sin is inexorably present.
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  There is no such thing as an unpolluted good work generated
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  by a fallen human being. The doctrine derived from this
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  text is total depravity. I think we need to clarify total
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  depravity because the phrase itself it sounds like it means
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  every single person is basically a serial killer waiting to
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  happen. People here total depravity and
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  think it means we are all as evil as we could possibly be.
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  That is a very common misunderstanding.
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  Total depravity does not mean absolute or utter depravity.
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  It does not mean every human acts out the worst possible evil
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  at all times. Instead, it describes the extent
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  of the corruption. It means that every single
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  faculty of our being, our mind, our will, our affections in our
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  physical body is radically corrupted by the pollution of
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  original sin. Every part of us is stained.
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  Can you give us a picture of that?
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  Think of a glass of pure Clearwater.
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  If you place just one drop of deadly poison into that glass,
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  the entire glass is contaminated.
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  The water is not completely black, right?
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  It might even still look clear, but every single sip is lethal.
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  Wow, so even when I do something objectively good, like say,
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  giving money to a homeless person or helping my neighbor
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  fix their roof, that action is still tainted?
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  Yes, because maybe I gave the money because I wanted the
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  people walking by to think I'm generous.
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  Or maybe I helped my neighbor because I felt a sense of
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  superiority over them. My motives are never 100% pure.
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  That is the harsh reality. Our best works are stained by
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  pride, selfishness, or desire for self glorification.
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  Therefore, we possess no innate pure righteousness to present
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  before a holy God. Every single action requires
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  forgiveness. That completely shatters any
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  legalistic contract we think we have.
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  It does, and this exact concept anticipates the Apostle Paul's
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  argument later in the New Testament book of Romans, where
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  he pulls from Old Testament texts to prove that no one is
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  righteous, not even 1. The reality of total depravity
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  is woven into the very fabric of biblical syntax.
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  So Solomon takes this massive universe altering theological
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  fact and he immediately applies it to our daily interpersonal
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  lives. In verse 21 he says do not take
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  to heart all the things people say, lest you hear your servant
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  cursing you, for you know you have cursed others.
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  It is such a practical application.
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  I love this pivot. It is like imagine you install
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  this high tech security system on the doors of your house to
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  keep out insults, bad advice and gossip only to realize the call
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  is coming from inside the house. You are the 1 whispering the
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  curses. The logical move Solomon makes
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  here is brilliant. He moves from a universal
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  theological fact to internal subjective conviction.
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  We get incredibly offended when someone slights us.
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  Instantly. We demand apologies.
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  We hold grudges for years. We feel entirely justified in
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  our anger because someone spoke poorly of us behind our backs.
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  But Solomon tells us to pause and look in the mirror.
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  He forces us to remember our own history of sinful speech.
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  If we are honest with ourselves, we have all gossiped.
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  We have all muttered angry things about our boss, our
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  friends or our family members when they were not in the room.
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  And if you truly grasp your own total depravity, you should be
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  the most patient, forgiving person on the planet.
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  You have to stop holding your spouse, your children, your
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  friends and your Co workers to a standard of flawless perfection
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  that you yourself miserably failed to keep.
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  Right. You know your own heart.
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  You know the awful things you have thought and said.
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  Because hypocrisy is the venom of the Pharisee.
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  If you know that you are spiritually bankrupt, you do not
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  expect perfection from another bankrupt person.
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  It completely changes how you react to being wrong.
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  It turns a grievance into a moment of self examination.
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  Before you enthrone yourself as a High Court judge over every
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  careless word spoken against you, you must remember the
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  careless words you have spoken against others.
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  It is a call to radical humility.
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  OK, so since our internal depravity taints all human
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  wisdom, the text pivots again. Solomon shows us what happens
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  when our finite, tainted wisdom goes hunting for ultimate
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  answers. He goes searching and he
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  uncovers A terrifying concrete evil.
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  He really pulls back the curtain here.
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  This takes us into verses 23 through 26, where he deals with
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  the bitter snare of folly and sexual sin.
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  Breakdown his search for us. Well, Solomon provides an
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  autobiographical confession of his own limitations.
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  He uses very active verbs. I tested, I said.
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  I turn my heart to describe his exhaustive, intense search for
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  abstract wisdom. He wanted to understand the
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  grand scheme of the universe. But he couldn't do it.
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  No, he concludes that it is far off and exceedingly deep.
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  He cannot figure it out. Then his search for abstract
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  philosophical wisdom transitions into the discovery of a very
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  specific, tangible evil. He says he finds something more
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  bitter than death, and he identifies it as the adulterous
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  woman. I know this passage has been
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  misused in the past, so let's be very clear about what is
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  happening here for our listeners.
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  Solomon is not issuing some universal denigration of women.
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  He's not saying women are inherently more evil than men.
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  Absolutely not. In the wider wisdom tradition of
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  the Old Testament, specifically in the book of Proverbs, wisdom
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  itself is personified as a woman, right?
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  Lady Wisdom. Yes, Lady Wisdom cries out in
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  the streets, offering life and truth.
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  The adulterous woman described here in Ecclesiastes represents
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  literal sexual immorality, yes, but she also serves as a broader
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  cultural preconification of spiritual apostasy.
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  She represents the enslaving, destructive nature of folly.
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  The language Solomon uses to describe this temptation is what
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  really stops me in my tracks. He does not describe falling
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  into sexual sin as a casual slip up.
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  He does not treat it like a simple mistake in judgement,
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  like oops, I fell into bed. He uses ancient hunting imagery.
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  The Hebrew vocabulary in this section is truly terrifying.
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  He describes her heart as snares and Nets, and her hands as
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  fetters. Let's look at the actual words.
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  The word for snares is matsod. Matsod, Yes.
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  This does not refer to a simple tripwire in the woods.
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  Matsod refers to massive siege works built around a city or
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  brutal, inescapable traps designed to catch large,
• 19:45
  dangerous beasts. Like a massive steel bear trap
• 19:49
  hidden under the leaves, something designed to snap shut,
• 19:52
  crush bone and hold you in place until the hunter arrives to
• 19:54
  finish you off. Yes, and the word for Nets is
• 19:57
  cherim. This is a dragnet.
• 19:59
  It was a heavy weighted net thrown into the sea to pull fish
• 20:02
  helplessly. To their doom, so.
• 20:04
  They can't just swim out of it. No, the fish cannot swim out,
• 20:07
  they are dragged by overwhelming force to the shore to die.
• 20:11
  Finally, he uses the word esserum for fetters, which
• 20:14
  literally means bonds or chains of solid iron.
• 20:17
  Notice the anatomy of the temptation described.
• 20:20
  Her heart representing inner disposition and calculated
• 20:23
  intentionality is a trap. Her hands, representing physical
• 20:27
  actions in her brace, are iron chains.
• 20:30
  That is a calculated predatory imprisonment.
• 20:32
  It is a literal ambush. Furthermore, if you study the
• 20:35
  extra biblical literature of the ancient Near East, you find that
• 20:38
  the Pagan goddesses of love and war deities like Ishtar or
• 20:41
  Yunana, were often depicted in these exact predatory terms.
• 20:45
  They were hunters of men. That is wild.
• 20:47
  Solomon is adopting this familiar cultural motif to
• 20:50
  expose the demonic reality operating behind illicit sexual
• 20:53
  allure. It is not just physical
• 20:55
  gratification. It is a spiritual ambush
• 20:57
  designed to destroy the soul. Our modern culture frames sexual
• 21:00
  liberation in the exact opposite way.
• 21:02
  The message you hear constantly is one of total autonomy.
• 21:05
  You hear, follow your heart. Do whatever feels good.
• 21:07
  Throw off the restrictive old rules of religion.
• 21:09
  Live your truth. Right, complete autonomy.
• 21:12
  So how does reading this text, which paints temptation not as a
• 21:15
  casual thing but as an active predatory hunter wielding iron
• 21:19
  chains and a dragnet, completely upend that modern narrative?
• 21:23
  It reveals the great lie of our age.
• 21:26
  What the modern world calls absolute freedom is actually the
• 21:29
  heaviest, most brutal form of bondage.
• 21:32
  Sexual sin is a peculiar evil because it is a severe violation
• 21:37
  of the created order. It attacks the very core of
• 21:40
  human identity and the design of the family.
• 21:42
  It's not a victimless crime. No, to toy with it is a dance on
• 21:45
  the edge of the abyss. You cannot flirt with a dragnet
• 21:48
  and expect to swim away when you get bored, the text states.
• 21:51
  Is stark binary reality. Only the one who pleases God
• 21:55
  escapes while the sin is taken by her.
• 21:57
  Escape is a grace enabled rescue.
• 21:59
  Captivity is a moral judgement. I have read commentators who
• 22:02
  point out that God often judges the sexually immoral by simply
• 22:05
  giving them over to their own idols.
• 22:07
  He lets the hunter catch them. He allows them to be seized by
• 22:10
  their lusts, only to be dashed against the rocks.
• 22:13
  The Apostle Paul writes about that exact form of judgement in
• 22:16
  Romans chapter 1. God hands people over to their
• 22:19
  degraded passions. The intended effect of
• 22:22
  Ecclesiastes 7 on the original audience was to evoke absolute
• 22:27
  terror. Because they lived in a crazy
• 22:28
  culture. Too, they lived in a culture of
• 22:30
  saturated with fertility cults and temple prostitution.
• 22:33
  Solomon wanted them to view illicit sexual enticement as
• 22:36
  something literally worse than dying.
• 22:38
  He wanted to motivate them, through the fear of divine
• 22:41
  judgement, to flee the snare before the jaws snap shut.
• 22:45
  This specific predatory evil is just one symptom of a much wider
• 22:49
  systemic disease infecting humanity.
• 22:52
  Solomon decides to trace this all the way back to the very
• 22:54
  beginning of human history. He contrasts God's original,
• 22:57
  perfect design with mankind's historical reality.
• 23:00
  He goes back to Eden. Right, this brings us to verses
• 23:03
  27 through 29. Let's look at the statistics he
• 23:05
  brings up first, because they sound incredibly harsh on the
• 23:07
  surface. Solomon recounts his painstaking
• 23:10
  investigation into human nature. He says he added one thing to
• 23:14
  another to find the scheme of things.
• 23:16
  It is the language of an accountant trying to balance a
• 23:19
  Ledger, and he shares a statistical observation.
• 23:23
  He found one righteous man in 1000, but not a woman among all
• 23:27
  these. Again, we need to handle this
• 23:29
  carefully. He is not making an ontological
• 23:31
  statement about gender right. He is not saying men are capable
• 23:35
  of righteousness and women aren't.
• 23:37
  Correct. This is a hyperbolic
• 23:39
  illustration of the absolute rarity of true righteousness.
• 23:42
  It is the agonizing cry of a king who searched his entire
• 23:46
  corrupt Royal Court. Oh that makes sense.
• 23:48
  His court was massive. Remember, Solomon had 700 wives
• 23:52
  and 300 concubines. He lived in a palace filled with
• 23:54
  political maneuvering, backstabbing and manipulation.
• 23:57
  He searched among his massive entourage and found true wisdom
• 24:00
  to be virtually non existent. So it is an indictment on his
• 24:03
  own household. Yes, he is concluding that true
• 24:06
  righteousness is a statistical impossibility for fallen
• 24:09
  humanity. No one, male or female,
• 24:12
  naturally seeks after God. And that devastating realization
• 24:16
  leads to the massive climax in verse 29, he writes.
• 24:20
  See this alone I found that God made man upright.
• 24:24
  But they have sought out many schemes.
• 24:26
  This is the theological bedrock of his entire argument.
• 24:29
  It is a masterpiece of antithetical parallelism.
• 24:32
  It establishes the state of humanity before the fall in
• 24:35
  Eden. God made mankind Yashar.
• 24:38
  Yashar, what does that imply about our original state?
• 24:41
  Yashar means straight, right, just and morally unbending.
• 24:45
  It is a builder's term. Think of a perfectly plum wall
• 24:48
  or a street piece of timber. It is the exact opposite of
• 24:51
  being twisted, warped, or crooked in the garden.
• 24:54
  Adam possessed original righteousness.
• 24:56
  He was aligned perfectly with the will of his Creator.
• 24:58
  But then comes the catastrophic shift.
• 25:00
  The straight wood gets warped. The text says but they have
• 25:03
  sought out many schemes. The Hebrew word for schemes is
• 25:06
  Chishbanov. Chishbanov.
• 25:08
  Yes, it is an exceedingly rare noun.
• 25:09
  It stems from the root chahab, meaning to think, to account, or
• 25:12
  to calculate. In this specific context, it
• 25:15
  refers to complex inventions, cunning devices, or calculated
• 25:18
  sinful machinations. So we didn't just accidentally
• 25:22
  stumble into sin. We didn't just trip and fall
• 25:24
  into a puddle of immorality. We engineered it.
• 25:26
  We used our brains to invent it. Precisely why did the author
• 25:30
  choose Chish Boneth instead of a simpler, more common word for
• 25:34
  sin or transgression? Because he is specifically
• 25:37
  addressing the illusion of being too wise, The human intellect,
• 25:42
  our prize capability for reason and logic, has become the
• 25:46
  primary engine of our rebellion against God.
• 25:49
  That is a staggering thought. We use our minds to invent new
• 25:52
  ways to sin. We develop complex philosophies
• 25:55
  to justify our autonomy. We construct massive theological
• 25:58
  systems designed to evade the sovereign authority of God.
• 26:01
  It's kind of like, imagine a brilliant software engineer.
• 26:04
  You give this guy a state-of-the-art supercomputer
• 26:06
  and his mission is to cure a rare disease or solve world
• 26:09
  hunger. OK, but the moment you we hand
• 26:11
  him the keys to the computer, he sits down and writes a hyper
• 26:14
  complex malware program to rob a bank.
• 26:16
  God gave us a straight, perfect, brilliant intellect and the
• 26:19
  first thing we did was write malware to scheme against the
• 26:22
  one who made us. That is a highly accurate
• 26:24
  illustration. We are active, willing
• 26:27
  participants in our own corruption.
• 26:30
  This text completely rejects modern sociological narratives.
• 26:33
  How so? Think about liberal theology or
• 26:35
  modern secular theories of human development.
• 26:38
  They generally assert that people are essentially a blank
• 26:40
  slate or basically good, and that we are only corrupted by
• 26:44
  external societal structures, bad education, or economic
• 26:48
  inequality. The idea is that if we just fix
• 26:50
  the environment, if we just fund the schools better and
• 26:53
  reorganize the government, human beings will naturally become
• 26:56
  peaceful and good. But Ecclesiastes 29 insists the
• 27:00
  evil and man is not a defect in the Creator's workmanship, nor
• 27:03
  is it merely a product of a bad environment.
• 27:06
  It is active, calculated, human and rebellion.
• 27:09
  We constantly devise counterfeit righteousness, counterfeit
• 27:11
  wisdom, and counterfeit explanations to excuse our own
• 27:14
  behavior. We are schemers by nature.
• 27:16
  So if we stop and assess where we are right now in this text,
• 27:20
  the picture is incredibly grim. If our wisdom is limited, our
• 27:24
  righteousness is bankrupt, our best and most charitable actions
• 27:28
  are stained with hidden sin, and our brilliant minds are
• 27:31
  essentially factories pumping out new schemes to ignore God,
• 27:35
  where does that leave us? It leaves us in a bad spot.
• 27:38
  A listener hearing this might just feel like standing on the
• 27:40
  precipice of total despair. Where is the hope in all of
• 27:43
  this? If we stop reading here, we are
• 27:46
  left in the suffocating grip of despair.
• 27:49
  But the entire burden of Ecclesiastes 7 is to bring us to
• 27:52
  the end of ourselves. It is designed to exhaust our
• 27:55
  self-reliance so we are forced to look somewhere else.
• 27:58
  The text screams for a greater Son of David.
• 28:01
  We must view this entire passage through the lens of
• 28:04
  Christological fulfillment. Let's connect those dots.
• 28:06
  Start with Solomon's search for the one righteous man.
• 28:09
  He looked at 1000 people and couldn't find a single one who
• 28:12
  did good and never sinned. Solomon searched desperately and
• 28:15
  declared there is not a righteous man on earth, but
• 28:17
  redemptive history declares A glorious universe altering
• 28:20
  reversal. There was 1 righteous man on the
• 28:23
  earth. He is the Word made flesh, the
• 28:26
  second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 28:28
  He is the one in 1000. He is the statistical
• 28:31
  impossibility stepping into human history.
• 28:34
  Yes. Where the first Adam fell from
• 28:36
  his uprightness and plunged humanity into a chaotic mess of
• 28:39
  sinful schemes, Christ descended from the glory of heaven and
• 28:43
  yielded flawless, perpetual active obedience to the law of
• 28:47
  God. I want to focus on that phrase
• 28:49
  active obedience. Break that down, because I think
• 28:51
  a lot of Christians only think about the cross.
• 28:54
  They only think about Jesus dying to wipe away their bad
• 28:56
  record. But active obedience is
• 28:58
  something different, and it is crucial for our Peace of Mind.
• 29:01
  Active obedience refers to Christ's sinless life.
• 29:05
  He didn't just come to earth, wait around for 33 years, and
• 29:08
  then die to pay for our sins. He lived a life of perfect,
• 29:11
  exhaustive compliance to God's law.
• 29:13
  He actively did the right thing every single time.
• 29:16
  He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength every
• 29:19
  single second of His life. His act of obedience is the
• 29:23
  exact and only remedy for the total depravity exposed in verse
• 29:26
  20. Because we could never
• 29:28
  manufacture our own righteousness, God offers us the
• 29:31
  imputed righteousness of Christ. It is an alien righteousness.
• 29:35
  Alien, meaning it comes from completely outside of us.
• 29:38
  It is credited to our account by faith alone.
• 29:41
  Think of it this way. We spend our lives on a
• 29:43
  treadmill, running ourselves to death, trying to prove we are
• 29:46
  worthy, trying to justify our existence through our jobs, our
• 29:50
  parenting, or our moral causes. And getting absolutely nowhere.
• 29:53
  Exactly Christ steps up, fulfills every requirement
• 29:57
  Florida State, and hands us His spotless record.
• 29:59
  So when we finally cease trying to be overly righteous in our
• 30:03
  own exhausting strengths, we are driven to rely entirely on his
• 30:06
  flawless record. It is a massive relief.
• 30:09
  It is the only place we can find rest.
• 30:11
  What about the snares and the iron fetters of sexual sin and
• 30:14
  folly? How does the life and work of
• 30:16
  Christ answer the terror verse 26?
• 30:19
  Verse 26 describes a fate more bitter than death, a hunter
• 30:22
  dragging humanity down to destruction.
• 30:25
  The gospel announces that the Lord Jesus Christ voluntarily
• 30:28
  descended into the very maw of death.
• 30:31
  He allowed himself to be taken by the fetters of the grave.
• 30:33
  He faced it head on. He took the bitter curse of the
• 30:35
  law upon himself on the cross he was bound so that we might be
• 30:39
  set free. He walked right into the
• 30:41
  dragnet. He let the bear trap snap shut
• 30:44
  on himself. And through his victorious
• 30:46
  bodily resurrection, Christ shatter the iron fetters of sin
• 30:50
  and death from the inside out. He is the ultimate fulfillment
• 30:53
  of the one who pleases God and therefore escapes her.
• 30:56
  Christ escaped the tomb. Amen.
• 30:58
  Because believers are united to Him by faith, they're delivered
• 31:02
  from the inescapable dragnet of their own lusts and the final,
• 31:05
  terrifying judgment those lusts deserve.
• 31:07
  They are no longer prey to the hunter.
• 31:09
  The chain is broken. That leaves the final tension in
• 31:12
  verse 29, mankind seeking out many schemes.
• 31:15
  Humanity has spent millennia scheming ways to save itself.
• 31:19
  We invent false religions. We invent political utopianism
• 31:22
  believing we can legislate our way back to Eden.
• 31:24
  Which never works out. Never.
• 31:27
  We embrace evolutionary theories that excuse our behavior.
• 31:30
  We create moralistic therapeutic deism, which is just the belief
• 31:34
  that God is a distant Butler who wants us to be nice and feel
• 31:38
  happy. These are the wretched
• 31:40
  inventions of a fallen mind trying to reach God on its own
• 31:43
  terms by passing the cross. But God has a response to all
• 31:47
  our brilliant scheming. The cross of Jesus Christ is the
• 31:50
  divine scheme. It is the eternal decree of the
• 31:53
  Triune God to redeem a people for his own glory.
• 31:56
  The cross destroys the wisdom of the wise.
• 31:59
  It completely thwarts the cleverness of the schemers.
• 32:02
  It turns everything upside down. Christ did not come to offer us
• 32:05
  a new philosophical paradigm to add to our earthly calculations.
• 32:09
  He did not come to give us a better set of rules.
• 32:11
  He came to crucify the old man with all his deceitful schemes
• 32:14
  and to raise us up as a completely new creation.
• 32:17
  So the severe surgical intervention of Ecclesiastes 7
• 32:21
  is actually an incredible mercy. It strips away the exhausting
• 32:24
  treadmill of self salvation. It looks you in the eye and
• 32:26
  tells you to stop wasting your breath, pretending you can
• 32:28
  manage your own righteousness. It is the best bad news you will
• 32:31
  ever hear. It takes the idol of
• 32:33
  self-reliance out of your hands so you can rest completely,
• 32:36
  fully and permanently in the finished work of Christ.
• 32:39
  It is harsh medicine for a mortally sick soul.
• 32:42
  It humbles the proud legalist, it warns the reckless rebel, and
• 32:46
  it drives the desperate center straight into the arms of the
• 32:49
  Savior. As we wrap up this deep dive,
• 32:51
  let's recap the key takeaways we have uncovered today for you
• 32:54
  guys listening, first, kill the hypocrite within.
• 32:58
  Stop demanding flawless perfection from your spouse,
• 33:01
  your kids, and your Co workers when you know the massive depths
• 33:04
  of your own internal depravity. Stop eavesdropping on the world
• 33:08
  expecting praise. 2nd Flee the predatory iron chains of sexual
• 33:12
  sin. Do not toy with the snares of a
• 33:15
  hyper sexualized culture that promises absolute freedom but
• 33:18
  delivers bitter, inescapable death.
• 33:20
  You cannot outsmart the hunter on your own.
• 33:22
  And 3rd, abandoned your human scheming.
• 33:25
  Stop trying to invent clever ways to bypass God's law or
• 33:28
  manufacture your own salvation. Rest entirely on the alien
• 33:32
  perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.
• 33:34
  True wisdom is knowing that you possess no innate wisdom, and
• 33:37
  true righteousness is resting entirely in His completed work.
• 33:40
  I want to leave you with a final thought to Mull over.
• 33:42
  Building on what we discussed today, if 1st 29 tells us that
• 33:45
  our natural fallen inclination is to use our brilliant minds to
• 33:49
  invent complex schemes away from God, take a hard look at the
• 33:53
  landscape of our modern technological advancements.
• 33:56
  Look at the devices we hold in our hands.
• 33:58
  Is a sobering thought. Are the algorithms, the endless
• 34:02
  scrolling screens, and the virtual realities we consume
• 34:05
  every single day pushing us toward the fear of God?
• 34:09
  Or are they simply new shiny iron fetters wrapped up and sold
• 34:13
  to us as progress? Are we engineering our own
• 34:15
  captivity while calling it innovation?
• 34:18
  It is something to think about the next time you pick up your
• 34:19
  phone to scroll. Thank you so much for joining
• 34:21
  the conversation today. We will catch you on the next
• 34:23
  deep dive.