Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Desolation of the Self-Righteous and the Deliverance of the God-Fearer: Navigating the Poison of Perfectionism in a Bent World (Ecclesiastes 7:15-18)

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The Desolation of the Self-Righteous and the Deliverance of the God-Fearer: Navigating the Poison of Perfectionism in a Bent World (Ecclesiastes 7:15-18) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reform Thinking. I am your host and I am here
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  with our resident expert for another deep dive.
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  Hey. It is really good to be back.
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  We have a lot of ground to cover today.
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  We really do. So I want to start by asking
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  you, the listener, a pretty direct question.
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  Have you ever found yourself lying awake at 2:00 in the
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  morning? The 2:00 AM stare.
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  Right, you are just staring at the ceiling and you are running
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  through this meticulous step by step mental checklist of every
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  single choice you made that day. Just trying to figure out where
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  the math went wrong. Yes, precisely.
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  You know that feeling. The house is completely quiet,
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  but your mind is just deafening. Because you are completely
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  exhausted. You are exhausted because you
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  are trying to manage every single variable in your life.
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  You are trying to avoid suffering and we live in this
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  era where we are conditioned from day one to believe that if
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  we just apply the right inputs, we are guaranteed the right
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  outputs. Like a formula.
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  Right. A formula, you think to
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  yourself. Well, if I read all the leading
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  parenting books and if I discipline my kids with the most
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  accurate biblical methods, then I am safe.
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  Or if I filter all the media coming into my house.
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  Yeah, or if I optimize my retirement portfolio.
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  Or, you know, if I only buy grass fed organic groceries.
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  You think you can build this impenetrable fortress around
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  family? You're trying to keep the chaos
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  of the fallen world out. But then the chaos breaks in any
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  way. You do everything by the book
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  and things still fall apart. A terrifying medical diagnosis
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  just comes out of nowhere. Or a sudden financial crisis
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  hits your industry. Or maybe a relationship you
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  poured years into just fractures and you are left staring at the
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  ceiling totally bewildered. Wondering why the formula failed
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  to produce the expected result. That specific exhaustion, that
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  bone weary fatigue of trying to be the sovereign detect of your
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  own safety, that is what we are looking at today.
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  I have a massive stack of source material for this deep dive.
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  We do. We are taking theological texts,
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  historical analysis, and even some psychological data, and we
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  are aiming all of it at a staggering passage of Scripture.
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  Ecclesiastes, Chapter 7, verses 15 through 18.
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  The mission here is to understand how we react when the
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  world breaks our expected rules of cause and effect.
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  Specifically, we are targeting that toxic illusion that we can
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  control God's Providence through our own strict behavioral
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  perfectionism. And let me tell you, this
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  material offers an unexpected massive remedy for that exact.
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  Exhaustion. It really does.
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  OK, let's unpack This set the stage for us.
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  So to set the stage properly, we need to look at the primary
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  observation made by the author. He's known as Kohelith or the
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  Preacher, and he brings us up right at the beginning of our
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  text in Ecclesiastes 7.15. And he presents us with this
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  totally perplexing anomaly. He does.
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  He writes that in his fleeting days he has seen a righteous
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  person perishing in their righteousness, and then he sees
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  a wicked person prolonging their life and their evil doing.
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  Which is just a stark empirical observation of the world as it
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  actually operates under the sun. Yes, it confronts the reader
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  with a scenario that just shatters are expected moral
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  order. I mean, we like to think the
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  universe is this clean, orderly spreadsheet.
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  But the preacher looks at reality and says the spreadsheet
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  has a massive error in it. Right.
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  He sees the person who walks with integrity, integrity who
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  honors God, who pays their taxes, who loves their neighbor,
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  and that person is struck down in their prime.
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  They suffer, they lose their livelihood or they face an early
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  death. And then he looks across the
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  street and he sees the corporate embezzler, the ruthless tyrant,
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  the person who lies and cheats at every single turn.
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  And that guy is living in a penthouse, enjoying perfect
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  health well into his 90s. The preacher does not try to
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  sugarcoat this. He does not explain it away.
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  With a neat little cliche, he forces us to look straight at
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  the jarring reality of a fallen world.
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  That is so true because our default expectation is this
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  direct correlation. Good behavior equals good
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  outcomes. Bad behavior equals bad
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  outcomes. We are hardwired to think that
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  way. We are.
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  I like you to think of it like the analogy of a vending
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  machine. We are taught from a very young
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  age that the universe operates like this giant vending machine.
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  Oh, I love this analogy. Right.
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  You walk up to it, and if you insert the correct coin, which
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  represents your good behavior, your obedience, your daily
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  devotions, then you get to press the button.
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  And out pops the snack you want. Yes, that snack is God's
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  blessing. It is physical safety, a
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  comfortable life, healthy children.
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  But the preacher in Ecclesiastes is walking up to us, tapping us
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  on the shoulder and pointing out that the vending machine is
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  broken. It is totally busted.
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  Sometimes you put your shiny perfect twine in, you press the
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  button and you get absolutely nothing.
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  The coil turns halfway, the bag of chips get stuck against the
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  glass, and you are left with nothing to show for your
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  investment. Meanwhile, someone else walks
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  up, kicks the machine, breaks all the rules, puts zero money
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  in, and a free candy bar just falls right into their hands.
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  It is madding. It offends our basic sense of
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  justice. It makes us want to shake the
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  machine until it gives us what we think we earned.
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  That vending machine analogy captures the frustration
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  perfectly. What is fascinating here is how
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  effectively this anomaly shatters any mechanistic
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  transactional theology we might harbor.
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  And he uses some very specific language in the Hebrew to frame
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  this, doesn't he? He does.
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  He uses the phrase by me, hebly, which translates to In the days
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  of my breath. The word he uses for breath or
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  vapor is hebel. Hebel.
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  And that concept is central to the entire book of Ecclesiastes.
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  It really is the anchor of a whole book.
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  It signifies something that is real but entirely ungraspable.
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  It is fleeting. It is transient.
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  Kind of like seeing your breath on a freezing winter morning.
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  Spot on. You can see it clearly for a
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  second, but if you try to grab it and put it in your pocket you
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  catch absolutely nothing. It just vanishes.
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  So the preacher is saying that within this short, ungraspable
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  vapor of a life under the sun, the expected rules sometimes
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  fail completely. Yes, you cannot domesticate
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  Providence. You cannot put a leash on God's
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  sovereign timeline, and this observation acts as a necessary
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  counterweight to other portions of biblical wisdom literature.
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  Like proverbs? Exactly as you read the book of
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  Proverbs, you are given the normative general principles of
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  a moral universe. Proverbs teaches that righteous
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  living leads to stability. And wickedness leads to ruin.
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  Hard work usually leads to a harvest, and laziness usually
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  leads to poverty. Those are the absence of cause
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  and effect. But if you take proverbs and
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  turn it into a rigid mechanical guarantee, you will be crushed
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  when reality hits. Right, because Proverbs gives us
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  the general rules of the road, but Ecclesiastes tells us that
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  sometimes a drunk driver crosses the center line and hits you
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  anyway. Even if you were doing this need
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  limit and wearing your seat belt.
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  Exactly. The general rule does not
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  eliminate the chaos of the vapor.
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  And you know, this tension is not just isolated to
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  Ecclesiastes. We see it wrestling throughout
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  the Wisdom literature. Everywhere.
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  Look at the book of Job. Job is the ultimate example of
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  the vending machine getting stuck.
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  I mean, he did everything right. The text goes out of its way to
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  tell us he was blameless, upright and feared God.
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  He was putting all the right coins in the machine.
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  Every single day, yet in a matter of hours, he lost his
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  children, his wealth and his health.
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  And what did his friends do? They showed up and tried to
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  force their vending machine theology onto him.
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  Right. They essentially accused him of
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  hiding some secret sin. They argued that because the
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  machine always works, Job must have put a counterfeit coin in.
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  They could not handle the idea of a righteous sufferer.
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  Job's friends are the classic defenders of the transactional
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  universe. Because if Job was truly
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  innocent and still suffered, then they were not safe either,
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  right? That is the terror of it.
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  Their entire worldview was predicated on the idea that they
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  could avoid Job's fate by just being good enough.
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  We also see this exact crisis in Psalm 73 with Asaph.
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  Yes, Asaph nearly lost his footing entirely over this
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  issue. He looked around and saw the
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  arrogant prospering. They were healthy, they had
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  plenty of food. Their bodies were strong.
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  And they seem completely untroubled by the burdens of the
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  world. Meanwhile, Asaf felt like he was
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  keeping his heart pure for nothing.
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  He says he was getting stricken and disciplined all day long.
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  The apparent injustice of a righteous man suffering in a
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  wicked man thriving is a theological crisis that demands
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  an answer. It destroys the fragile glass
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  House of Easy believes them. We are forced to admit that our
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  neat little theological boxes cannot contain the solvent
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  freedom of the Almighty. And the original ancient readers
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  were confronted with this shocking concept.
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  It would have severely tested their understanding of how God
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  interacts with His people. Well, let's lean into that
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  historical backdrop for a minute.
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  The original audience hearing these words from the preacher
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  who is actually talking here? And when was this written?
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  That is a crucial point because the context changes how we hear
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  the tone of the book. Right, we are not just reading
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  the theoretical musings of some desert monk who never
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  experienced the real world. Far from it.
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  We're reading the words of someone who had access to every
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  possible lever of power and pleasure.
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  We are looking at the latter days of the Solomonic era,
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  roughly the 10th century BC. So Solomon's the author here.
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  Yes, and he is writing as an older, chastened king.
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  This is a man who had experienced unprecedented
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  national prosperity. I mean, he had architectural
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  triumphs that dazzled foreign monarchs.
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  He built the temple, these massive palaces, intricate
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  garden. He possessed unmatched wealth,
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  the text in Kings tells us. Silver was as common as stone in
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  Jerusalem during his reign. And he had intellectual success
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  too, right? He cataloged plant and animal
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  life, wrote proverbs, composed songs.
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  He had tasted every fleshly pleasure available to a human
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  being. He imported exotic goods, apes,
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  Peacocks, gold from a fear. He essentially ran the grandest,
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  most well funded experiment in human history.
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  He wanted to see if meaning and control could be secured under
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  the sun. He had unlimited funds to try
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  and fix the broken vending machine.
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  Right. If anyone could buy enough
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  influence, or hire enough guards or acquire enough medical care
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  to keep the chaos out, it was Solomon.
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  He tried to out build, out spend and out think the vapor.
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  Yet, as the historical record in First Kings 11 details, so
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  tragically, his heart was LED astray.
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  Despite all that God-given wisdom.
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  Yes, he multiplied foreign wives for political alliances and
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  fleshly desire, and they turned his heart toward idolatry.
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  He built high places for the detestable gods of the
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  surrounding nations. He fell into catastrophic
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  spiritual bankruptcy. So Ecclesiastes represents the
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  retrospective reflections of a man who had every conceivable
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  earthly advantage, and he realized that apart from the
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  fear of God, all of it is Hebel. A chasing after the wind.
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  Yes, he could not straighten the crooked realities of a fallen
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  world with his wealth or his intellect.
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  He is looking back at the wreckage of his own compromises
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  and warning the reader. That adds such a heavy layer of
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  credibility to his words. He is a wounded veteran of his
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  own foolishness. He is telling us, you know, I
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  tried to buy control, I tried to build control, I tried to marry
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  control and it all turned to dust in my hands.
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  But there's another layer here that we need to unpack.
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  It is about how the ancient Israelites understood their
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  relationship with God compared to how we understand it today.
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  Because their expectation of the vending machine was a bit
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  different than ours, wasn't it? Yes, and this requires us to
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  look carefully at the biblical covenants.
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  We have to recognize the fundamental distinction between
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  God's covenantal dealings with the theocratic nation of Israel
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  and his dealings with the New Testament church.
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  OK, lay that out for us. Under the Mosaic Law,
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  specifically the Deuteronomic Covenant outlined in Deuteronomy
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  chapter 27 and 28, God gave explicit earthly material
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  promises for obedience. And physical curses for
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  disobedience. Exactly.
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  The expectation of retributive justice was intensely
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  territorial and temporal. The promise was that if the
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  nation obeyed the law, their crops would yield a massive
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  harvest. Their livestock would multiply.
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  Their enemies would flee before them in seven directions.
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  And their days would be prolonged in the physical land
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  of Canaan, but if they rebelled, the skies would become like
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  bronze. The rain would stop, disease
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  would strike, and foreign armies would besiege their cities.
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  So for the ancient Israelite, the vending machine theology
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  actually had a legal national basis.
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  If the nation obeyed, it literally rained.
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  If the nation rebelled, there was a literal drought.
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  They had a physical geographic contract with God regarding
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  their national prosperity. The National Historic
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  Expectation was material blessing in the present age, but
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  Solomon's empirical observation in Ecclesiastes 7 showed a
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  chilling realization. Even within that covenant
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  community, individual earthly life did not always neatly align
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  with the national ideal in the immediate president.
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  You could have a faithful, righteous Israelite who still
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  died young from an illness, or you could have a corrupt local
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  official who oppressed the poor and live to a comfortable old
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  age. Now shift that framework to the
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  New Testament church, because that is where a lot of confusion
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  happens today. Massive confusion.
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  The Church is not a geopolitical nation.
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  We're not promised an earthly theocracy.
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  We're not promised immunity from physical suffering.
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  Nor are we guaranteed material wealth in this life.
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  The theological shift moves from Israel's national temporal
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  program to the church's heavenly calling.
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  The apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 1.3 that God has
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  blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly
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  places. He does not promise us a fertile
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  farm in Ohio or a booming stock portfolio.
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  He promises us justification, adoption, sanctification, and
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  eternal glory. That distinction changes
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  everything about how we read the events of our lives.
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  But what happens when people today mix up those two
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  covenants? What happens when a modern
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  listener takes the physical promises made to national Israel
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  and drops them into their own lap in the 21st century?
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  When you fail to distinguish Israel's earthly material
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  program from the Church's heavenly spiritual calling, you
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  create a theological disaster. The prosperity gospel.
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  Yes, this extrapolation is the root of the modern prosperity
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  gospel. This false teaching takes the
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  temporal physical guarantees made to the nation of Israel,
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  like wealth, perfect health and victory over earthly enemies,
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  and applies them directly to individual Christians today.
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  It falsely guarantees physical health and material wealth as a
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  reward for having enough faith. It essentially teaches that if
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  you are sick or poor, it is because your faith is weak or
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  you have hidden sin. It turns God into a cosmic
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  bellhop whose sole purpose is to deliver your best life now.
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  So what does this all mean for you, the listener?
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  Right now? You might be driving to work or
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  folding a mountain of laundry, thinking, well, I don't watch
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  those flashy guys in the shiny suits on television.
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  Right. You think you are immune to it?
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  You say I don't believe in the outright prosperity gospel.
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  I know God doesn't promise me a private jet, but we need to
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  challenge that assumption. Because even if you reject the
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  extreme versions of health and wealth teaching, many of us
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  still harbor a subtle, insidious mindset.
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  We operate with what we can call a functional Arminianism.
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  Yes, we secretly believe that our behavioral exactitude
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  obligates God to bless us. We think that if we read our
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  Bibles every morning without fail, give our 10% to the
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  church, volunteer on the hospitality team and avoid major
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  public sins, then God owes us a trouble free Tuesday.
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  That is a highly accurate diagnosis of the modern
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  evangelical condition. We operate with a sanitized
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  middle class version of the prosperity gospel.
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  We use our obedience as a bargaining chip.
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  We believe our discipline secures our safety.
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  We look at our daily quiet time or our family worship routine
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  not as joyful communion with God, but as a mystical force
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  field we are erecting to keep bad things from happening to our
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  kids. And when the force field fails,
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  when the car accident happens, or the roof leaks, or a child
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  wanders away from the faith, our first thought is God.
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  Why is this happening? I put my coin in the machine.
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  I did my part. I upheld my end of the bargain.
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  So we have established that the vending machine of life is
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  broken under the sun, the righteous suffer, and the wicked
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  prosper. Let us move to the first toxic
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  human reaction to this brokenness.
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  When we see the chaos, our fleshly instinct is to try and
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  fix the machine ourselves by taking absolute control.
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  Which brings us to the warning in verse 16.
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  And this is an incredibly jarring command.
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  The preacher says be not overly righteous and do not make
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  yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself
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  it? Stops you in your tracks.
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  Wait, hold on, we have to stop right there.
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  Is the Bible not constantly telling us to be as holy as
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  possible? It is.
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  I mean Jesus says in Matthew 5.48 to be perfect as your
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  heavenly Father is perfect. We are commanded to pursue
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  holiness. How can anyone possibly be too
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  righteous? It sounds like a massive
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  contradiction until we look closely at the language in the
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  context. The Hebrew phrase used here for
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  overly righteous is sadikarba. Sadikarba OK, break that down.
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  We need to clarify immediately that this does not mean genuine
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  imputed righteousness. It does not mean sincere, humble
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  obedience to God. You cannot love God too much.
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  You cannot trust Christ too much, and you cannot obey the
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  moral law too sincerely. Right, what the preacher is
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  condemning here is a self generated legalistic
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  perfectionism. It is a fabricated righteousness
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  that a person uses as an instrument of control.
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  So it is about control. Yes, the word harba means much,
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  exceedingly or abundantly. It describes an excess of human
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  regulation where a person tries to exceed their creaturely
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  limits by constructing endless rules to manage their
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  environment and guarantee their safety.
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  So it is the difference between obeying God out of love and
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  gratitude versus building a fortress of extra man made rules
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  to ensure you never get hurt. Is defensive living mask as
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  holiness? It is the guy who says, well God
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  said don't cross this line, so I am going to draw 50 more lines
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  miles away from God's line and I'm going to force my whole
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  family to live inside this tiny suffocating box just to be safe.
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  Yes, it is the Pharisee who adds thousands of oral traditions to
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  the Law of Moses because they are terrified of the vapor.
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  And the consequences of this defensive living are severe.
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  The text follows the prohibition with a haunting question.
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  It asks why should you destroy yourself?
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  The Hebrew verb used for destroy yourself is to show mem.
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  It carries A reflexive force. Meaning is something you were
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  doing to yourself. A self-inflicted wound.
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  Exactly. The root word means to be
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  desolate, appalled, stunned, or ruined.
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  So a literal, precise translation of this phrase is
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  Why should you cause yourself to be ruined?
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  Or why should you make yourself desolate?
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  Making yourself desolate. That is a terrifying image.
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  It is like salting your own field so nothing can ever grow
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  there again. You are the one poisoning your
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  own well. The perfectionist, through his
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  excessive, scrupulous focus on controlling people and
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  circumstances, literally ruins his own life.
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  He sucks every ounce of joy out of his existence.
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  He creates his own psychological and spiritual desolation.
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  He takes the responsibility that belongs only to the sovereign
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  God, the responsibility of managing the universe and
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  dictating outcomes, and places it on his own finite, fragile
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  shoulders. That weight is crushing.
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  Let us paint a picture of what this looks like in real life.
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  There is a very vivid illustration from Pastor Brian
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  Borgman regarding this exact dynamic.
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  Oh, the family illustration. That one hits art.
• 19:35
  He describes the uptight, sanctimonious family.
• 19:37
  We all know a family like this in the church.
• 19:39
  Or maybe, if we're honest, we have been this family.
• 19:42
  They restrict all secular media. No movies, no modern music, no
• 19:46
  television. They only eat the purest, most
• 19:48
  ethically sourced organic foods. They homeschool their children
• 19:52
  with a rigid, unbreakable military style schedules.
• 19:56
  They hold exact puritanical family worship every single day,
• 20:00
  and if a child fidgets, the wrath of the Father comes down
• 20:03
  on them. On paper, to the outside
• 20:05
  observer, they look like the Navy Seals of Christianity.
• 20:09
  They look perfectly righteous. But in reality, inside the home,
• 20:13
  they're entirely miserable. The house is a battleground.
• 20:15
  There is constant tension, constant correcting, constant
• 20:19
  fear of a misstep. They look at other families in
• 20:22
  the church who do not follow their strict self-imposed
• 20:24
  rubrics. Families who are just genuinely
• 20:27
  happy in the Lord enjoying a pizza on a Friday night and the
• 20:30
  overly righteous family is bewildered.
• 20:32
  They are resentful. They cannot figure out why their
• 20:35
  flawless performance is producing such a desolate,
• 20:37
  joyless harvest. That illustration captures the
• 20:41
  essence of making yourself desolate perfectly.
• 20:43
  They are ruining themselves. They're attempting to insulate
• 20:46
  themselves from the chaotic Providence of verse 15 by
• 20:49
  doubling down on behavioral control.
• 20:51
  They believe that if they're just strict enough, just
• 20:53
  separate enough, just rigorous enough, they can force God's
• 20:57
  hand to bless them and protect their children from the vapor.
• 21:00
  This is the sin of Ferrice ISM. At its core, it is an attempt to
• 21:05
  usurp the throne of God through moral calculation.
• 21:10
  You are not trusting God to protect your family, you are
• 21:13
  trusting your methodology. And the toll this takes on a
• 21:16
  person's mental health is just staggering.
• 21:18
  We are not just talking about being a little uptight, we are
• 21:21
  talking about profound psychological damage.
• 21:23
  Well, severe psychological damage.
• 21:26
  The data regarding generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD,
• 21:30
  highlights how heavy this burden is.
• 21:32
  When people think their flawless performance controls the
• 21:35
  outcomes of their lives, they live in a state of constant
• 21:37
  psychological terror. Every minor failure, every skip
• 21:40
  devotion, every impatient word spoken to a spouse feels like a
• 21:44
  catastrophic breach in the fortress walls that will let the
• 21:46
  enemy in the. Statistics show how pervasive
• 21:49
  this baseline anxiety is across different demographics.
• 21:52
  The sources we are looking at point out that GAD effects
• 21:54
  nearly 9%, specifically 8.6% of white Americans.
• 21:59
  Roughly 5.8% of Hispanic Americans.
• 22:01
  Around 4.9% of African Americans.
• 22:04
  And 2.4% of Asian Americans. Now obviously anxiety has many
• 22:08
  complex physical and environmental causes, but in the
• 22:11
  church, a massive contributor to this mental health crisis is
• 22:15
  this performance based worldview.
• 22:17
  When you live with functional Armenianism, believing your
• 22:21
  exactitude controls God's Providence, you are carrying a
• 22:24
  weight you were never designed to carry.
• 22:27
  It is a recipe for total spiritual exhaustion.
• 22:30
  You scrutinize your spouse, your children, your church leaders
• 22:34
  and your own conscience with a microscope sharpened by fear.
• 22:38
  You are constantly looking for the flaw that might invite
• 22:41
  disaster. The external structure of your
• 22:43
  life might include biblical elements.
• 22:45
  You read your Bible, you go to church, you pray.
• 22:48
  But the foundation is entirely rotten because your confidence
• 22:51
  has shifted from the finished work of God to your own white
• 22:53
  knuckled grip on the steering wheel.
• 22:55
  You are trying to manage the vapor and the harder you
• 22:57
  squeeze, the more you realize your hands are empty.
• 22:59
  Which is terrifying. But this raises an obvious
• 23:02
  question for anyone listening. If being overly strict and
• 23:05
  building these rule fortresses ruins us, does the text suggest
• 23:09
  we should just abandoned the rules entirely?
• 23:11
  A lot of people draw that conclusion.
• 23:12
  Should we just throw our hands up in the air and say, well, the
• 23:14
  machine is broken, good people suffer and bad people get rich,
• 23:17
  so I might as well stop trying? That takes us right into the
• 23:21
  opposite extreme, the ditch on the other side of the road.
• 23:24
  We find that ditch addressed immediately in verse 17 where
• 23:27
  the warning shifts. The preacher commands be not
• 23:31
  overly wicked, neither be a fool.
• 23:33
  This is the antimian temptation. Yes, antinomian literally means
• 23:38
  against the law. It is the temptation to throw
• 23:41
  off all moral restraint. If following all the rules does
• 23:44
  not guarantee a safe, comfortable life, and if the
• 23:47
  wicked guys prosper anyway, why not just do whatever feels good?
• 23:50
  Why not cut corners on your taxes, indulge in secret sins on
• 23:54
  your computer, or harbor bitter resentment against your neighbor
• 23:58
  if it all ends up as uncontrollable vapor anyway?
• 24:01
  Vehemently rejects that idea. We cannot interpret the warning
• 24:05
  against being overly righteous as an endorsement of a balanced
• 24:08
  cocktail of virtue and vice. The preacher is not advising us
• 24:12
  to take a middle path of mediocrity.
• 24:14
  He is not saying have a little holiness on Sunday and a little
• 24:17
  sin on Friday night, just to keep things balanced.
• 24:20
  He targets this Antinomian temptation directly by using the
• 24:23
  Hebrew word sakal, which is translated as fool.
• 24:27
  And we need to be clear about what a fool is in biblical
• 24:30
  literature. It is not just someone who is
• 24:32
  bad at math or lack St. smarts. It is a moral category.
• 24:36
  Exactly. In Hebrew wisdom literature, the
• 24:39
  sakal is not identified by low intelligence or lack of
• 24:42
  education. The fool is the morally
• 24:44
  deficient rebel. It points to the type of person
• 24:47
  described by the Apostle Paul in Romans.
• 24:49
  One point and eight Someone who suppresses the truth in
• 24:52
  unrighteousness. The fool says in his heart there
• 24:56
  is no God, not as an intellectual conclusion, but as
• 24:59
  a moral wish. To embrace wickedness because
• 25:01
  Providence is confusing is not a display of philosophical
• 25:05
  liberation. It is an act of hostile
• 25:07
  rebellion against the Creator. It is looking at the confusing
• 25:10
  parts of God's administration and using them as an excuse to
• 25:13
  spit in his face. The text asks another poignant
• 25:15
  question here to parallel the previous one about ruining
• 25:18
  yourself. It asks why should you die
• 25:20
  before your time? Which is an analysis of the
• 25:23
  specific temporal warning attached to folly.
• 25:26
  Even if God's final eternal judgment is delayed until the
• 25:29
  end of the age, sin carries immediate temporal physical
• 25:33
  consequences right now in the present world.
• 25:36
  A person might look at the wicked man prospering in verse
• 25:39
  15 and think sin is safe. They might think they can get
• 25:42
  away with it. But verse 17 brings us crashing
• 25:44
  back to reality. Drunkenness, adultery, violence,
• 25:48
  laziness and dishonesty often shorten a person's life
• 25:52
  drastically. A person might escape the
• 25:54
  immediate lightning bolt from heaven, but cirrhosis of the
• 25:57
  liver from heavy drinking, a violent altercation stemming
• 26:00
  from anger, or the sheer physiological stress of
• 26:03
  maintaining a hidden, deceitful double life will destroy their
• 26:07
  earthly existence. The chaos of the world does not
• 26:09
  neutralize the poison of sin. If you drink poison, it will
• 26:13
  still kill you even if the world is confusing.
• 26:15
  That is the exact point. Chaotic Providence is never a
• 26:18
  valid license for rebellion. Just because you cannot
• 26:21
  understand why God allowed a specific hardship in your life,
• 26:25
  a miscarriage, a job loss, a chronic illness, you do not get
• 26:29
  a free pass to abandon His moral law.
• 26:32
  The disorder of the present age under the sun does not make sin
• 26:35
  harmless. Sin is still an acid that eats
• 26:38
  through the container it is kept in.
• 26:40
  It destroys you from the inside out.
• 26:41
  So let us summarize where we are standing right now.
• 26:44
  On the right side of the road we have the deep ditch of
• 26:47
  legalistic perfectionism. We cannot trust our own self
• 26:51
  generated righteousness to control outcomes or force God to
• 26:54
  bless us. If we try to manage every
• 26:56
  variable, we become anxious, desolate and miserable.
• 27:00
  We ruin ourselves. On the left side of the road, we
• 27:03
  have the dish of reckless folly. We cannot use the unpredictable
• 27:06
  chaos of the world as an excuse to throw off restraint and dive
• 27:09
  into sin, because sin is poison and it will kill us prematurely.
• 27:13
  Both ditches lead to destruction.
• 27:15
  So where is the safe ground? How do we walk on the road
• 27:18
  without falling into either ditch?
• 27:19
  The resolution is found in verse 18.
• 27:21
  This is the posture of true piety.
• 27:24
  The text says It is good that you should take hold of this and
• 27:28
  from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God
• 27:31
  shall come out from both of them.
• 27:33
  OK, fearing God, that is a phrase we hear constantly.
• 27:37
  It is on coffee mugs and bumper stickers, but what does it
• 27:40
  actually look like in this specific context?
• 27:42
  Because it cannot just mean striking mathematical average
• 27:45
  between being a strict Pharisee and being a wild Pagan.
• 27:48
  You are right to make that distinction.
• 27:50
  Fearing God is an entirely different category of living.
• 27:53
  It is a vertical posture, not a horizontal compromise.
• 27:57
  Yes, this is categorically not an Aristotelian golden mean.
• 28:01
  Tell us what that is. The philosopher Aristotle taught
• 28:03
  that virtue is simply the midpoint between two extremes.
• 28:07
  For instance, courage is the mean between cowardice and
• 28:10
  recklessness. But fearing God is not a call to
• 28:13
  moral mediocrity. It is not taking 50% of holiness
• 28:16
  and 50% of wickedness and blending them into a lukewarm
• 28:19
  smoothie. To understand this fear, we can
• 28:21
  look at the Septuagint, which is the ancient Greek translation of
• 28:24
  the Old Testament. It translates Fearing God here
• 28:28
  with the phrase fobumenos taniano.
• 28:31
  Fobumenos Tanthian. What does that convey?
• 28:34
  This language points out that fearing God is not a cowering,
• 28:37
  servile terror. It is not the panic of a
• 28:40
  condemned rebel waiting for the executioner's axe to fall.
• 28:43
  Rather, it is a reverential awe. It is the deep, settled
• 28:47
  recognition of God as the Sovereign Creator, Sustainer and
• 28:50
  Judge. It means utterly abandoning your
• 28:52
  idols of control. You trust God's sovereign
• 28:55
  Providence even when it evolves the confusing anomalies of verse
• 28:59
  15, and you submit to His authority.
• 29:01
  To fear God means you stop trying to be God.
• 29:04
  You step off the throne of your own life, hand over the steering
• 29:07
  wheel and admit you do not have the map.
• 29:09
  Yes, the Puritan theologian John Owen wrote extensively on the
• 29:13
  doctrine of mortification, and his insights illustrate this
• 29:16
  beautifully. John Owen is so helpful here.
• 29:18
  He taught that true conviction of our own inability must
• 29:22
  precede true comfort. Before you can experience the
• 29:26
  peace and joy of trusting God, you have to be thoroughly
• 29:29
  convicted of the utter futility of trusting yourself.
• 29:33
  Think about the ancient Israelites during the time of
• 29:35
  Jesus. They had morphed the law of God
• 29:38
  into a mechanistic system of control.
• 29:41
  They believe that by meticulously tithing their
• 29:44
  microscopic garden herbs, counting out leaves of mint,
• 29:47
  dill, and cumin, they could back Yahweh into a corner and
• 29:51
  obligate Him to give them prosperity.
• 29:53
  They had to drop those mechanistic formulas.
• 29:56
  They had to realize their perfectionistic strivings were
• 29:58
  impossible, despair of their own fabricated righteousness, and
• 30:02
  bow in reverence to the God who dwells above the sun.
• 30:05
  That brings us right to your front door.
• 30:06
  It does if you are listening to this right now and you feel that
• 30:09
  crushing weight on your chest from trying to manage every
• 30:11
  variable. Your kids behavior, your
• 30:14
  spouse's moods, your career trajectory, your health metrics,
• 30:16
  your daily schedule. You are being called by the Word
• 30:19
  of God to drop the burden. You are not holding the universe
• 30:22
  together. Stop suffocating your family
• 30:24
  with your anxiety disguise as holiness.
• 30:27
  Go make a simple dinner, sit down with your kids and enjoy a
• 30:31
  moment of leisure. Look out the window at the sky
• 30:34
  and recognize that the Sovereign God is on the throne and you are
• 30:39
  not. Do what you can in faithful,
• 30:41
  joyful obedience today, and leave the outcomes entirely in
• 30:44
  His capable hands. That is the liberating truth of
• 30:47
  this passage. The one who fears God comes out
• 30:50
  from both extremes. You are delivered from the
• 30:52
  tyranny of your own impossible standards, meaning you no longer
• 30:56
  have to live in terror of making a mistake.
• 30:59
  And simultaneously, you are protected from the destructive
• 31:01
  consequences of reckless sin because you're awe of God.
• 31:05
  It keeps you walking in His ways.
• 31:07
  You walk in the freedom of grace.
• 31:08
  Which sets us up for the culmination of this entire
• 31:11
  conversation, years before the New Testament points forward to
• 31:18
  a specific historical fulfillment.
• 31:20
  Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher, had a famous rule for
• 31:22
  studying scripture. He said that from every text in
• 31:25
  the Bible, no matter where you start, there is a road to
• 31:27
  Christ. So, looking back at Ecclesiastes
• 31:30
  7, who is the fulfillment of the righteous man perishing in his
• 31:33
  righteousness? Who is the ultimate anomaly?
• 31:36
  The Christological fulfillment here is breathtaking, the
• 31:39
  perfect fulfillment of verse 15. The righteous sufferer is the
• 31:43
  Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only human being in
• 31:45
  the history of the world of whom it can be said, without any
• 31:48
  qualification, that he did good and never sinned.
• 31:51
  The writer of Hebrews in Chapter 7, verse 26 describes Jesus as
• 31:55
  holy, innocent, undefiled and separated from sinners.
• 31:59
  He never put a foot wrong. He never harbored A bitter
• 32:02
  thought. He never spoke an idle word.
• 32:05
  He possessed actual, unblemished, perfect
• 32:08
  righteousness. Not the over righteousness of
• 32:10
  the Pharisees, which was just a mask, but true pure radiant
• 32:13
  holiness. And yet, look at what happened
• 32:15
  to him. Look at how the world treated
• 32:17
  the only truly righteous man. He perished violently.
• 32:21
  He was betrayed, beaten, mocked and nailed to the cursed Tree of
• 32:24
  Calvary. He suffered the brutal,
• 32:26
  agonizing fate that the law reserved for the wicked.
• 32:29
  He perished in his absolute righteous business, crying out
• 32:32
  in dereliction under the wrath of God.
• 32:33
  So that actual sinners, the truly wicked, who deserve to die
• 32:37
  before their time, you and me, could have our lives eternally
• 32:41
  prolonged in the presence of God.
• 32:43
  The Cross is the massive display of the perplexing anomaly under
• 32:47
  the sun, orchestrated by the infinite wisdom of GUN for our
• 32:50
  redemption. That turns the broken vending
• 32:53
  machine analogy entirely on its head.
• 32:55
  It shatters it completely. Jesus walked up to the machine.
• 32:58
  He put in the perfect coin of absolute lawless obedience.
• 33:02
  He earned every blessing, every honor, and every comfort.
• 33:05
  And instead of receiving the blessing, the machine fell on
• 33:07
  him and crushed. Him, and because He took the
• 33:10
  crushing weight of the law, the grace, the mercy, and the
• 33:14
  eternal life spill out freely to those of us who do nothing but
• 33:17
  kick the machine. It is a staggering reversal of
• 33:20
  our expectations. This brings us to a vital
• 33:22
  theological distinction regarding how we receive that
• 33:25
  grace. We must contrast the biblical
• 33:27
  doctrine of imputed righteousness against any system
• 33:31
  of works righteousness. Define imputed righteousness for
• 33:34
  us. Imputed righteousness, as
• 33:36
  articulated by the apostle Paul in First Corinthians 1.30, means
• 33:40
  that Christ has made unto us wisdom, righteousness,
• 33:43
  sanctification, and redemption. His perfect record of obedience
• 33:48
  is legally credited to our account in the courtroom of God.
• 33:51
  It is not a righteousness we generate from within.
• 33:53
  It is an alien righteousness given to us from the outside.
• 33:56
  Correct. This must be contrasted heavily
• 33:59
  against the doctrine of infused righteousness.
• 34:00
  Which is taught in systems like Roman Catholicism.
• 34:03
  Yes. That system teaches that a
• 34:04
  person receives grace, but must then cooperate with that grace
• 34:08
  to inherently become righteous enough over time to merit
• 34:12
  eternal life. If salvation depends on infused
• 34:14
  inherent righteousness, we are are thrust right back into the
• 34:17
  terror of verse 16. We will literally destroy
• 34:20
  ourselves trying to satisfy the infinite justice of God through
• 34:23
  our own cooperative efforts. We will never know if we have
• 34:26
  done enough. We must also contrast imputed
• 34:29
  righteousness with the Armenian exaltation of the human will.
• 34:32
  Which invariably creates an anxious performance based
• 34:35
  religion where you're standing with God is only as secure as
• 34:37
  your last choice or your current level of devotion.
• 34:40
  And when you believe you're standing fluctuates based on
• 34:43
  your daily performance, the anxiety rushes right back in.
• 34:47
  You are back to measuring the mint, dill and cumin.
• 34:50
  You are back to making yourself desolate, terrified that God is
• 34:53
  going to pull the rug out from under you because you failed.
• 34:56
  This raises a massive question for every listener regarding how
• 35:00
  we view our standing before God today.
• 35:02
  Are you attempting to secure your justification by your
• 35:05
  parenting systems? Are you relying on your
• 35:07
  devotional consistency to make God smile at you?
• 35:10
  Do you think your theological exactitude or your correct
• 35:13
  voting record makes you right with the creator the.
• 35:16
  Biblical Gospel declares that your justification is secured
• 35:19
  only by resting in the active and passive obedience of Jesus
• 35:22
  Christ you. Used a great theological phrase
• 35:25
  there act as and passive obedience.
• 35:27
  Let us make sure that is crystal clear for everyone.
• 35:30
  Christ's active obedience is His perfect life, living every day
• 35:34
  on earth, fulfilling all the laws we broke.
• 35:36
  He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength every
• 35:40
  second of His life. His passive obedience is His
• 35:43
  willing submission to the penalty of the cross, paying the
• 35:46
  debt for our sins with His blood.
• 35:48
  We need both. We need His perfect record
• 35:51
  credited to us so we are declared righteous, and we need
• 35:54
  His blood to wash away our ruined, sinful record.
• 35:58
  Yes, and when you truly grasp that double cure, it kills the
• 36:03
  poison of perfectionism at the root.
• 36:05
  You do not have to be overly righteous to secure God's favor.
• 36:08
  Because if you are in Christ, you are already clothed in the
• 36:11
  spotless, perfect righteousness of the Son of God.
• 36:14
  God looks at you and sees the perfect record of Jesus.
• 36:16
  That is the the only cure for the exhaustion we talked about
• 36:19
  at the beginning. It changes frantic, fearful
• 36:21
  striving into joyful, peaceful obedience.
• 36:25
  You obey not to get saved, but because you are saved.
• 36:28
  So as we wrap up this conversation, let us synthesize
• 36:30
  the main takeaways for your daily life.
• 36:32
  We started by looking at the exhausting reality of life under
• 36:35
  the sun. It is fleeting.
• 36:37
  It is a vapor. The vending machine of
• 36:38
  Providence is broken in this fallen world.
• 36:41
  You cannot fix it through legalistic perfectionism.
• 36:43
  That will only create deep, desolate anxiety and ruin your
• 36:47
  life. You also cannot cope with the
• 36:49
  brokenness by diving into reckless folly that will only
• 36:53
  invite ruin and cut your life short.
• 36:55
  The only answer, the only safe ground, is resting entirely in
• 36:59
  the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ and walking in
• 37:02
  reverend essential awe, the fear of God.
• 37:05
  It means accepting your status as a creature and letting God be
• 37:08
  the Creator. You hold on to the pursuit of
• 37:10
  true holiness, but you let go of trusting yourself.
• 37:14
  You reject sin, but you do not boast in your own strength.
• 37:17
  You receive the ordinary joys of life as gifts from a loving
• 37:20
  Father, not as wage as you earn through flawless technique.
• 37:23
  I want to leave you with a final thought to Mull over as you go
• 37:26
  about the rest of your week. It is something that builds on
• 37:29
  everything we have discussed today.
• 37:31
  Think about this, if the Almighty God orchestrated the
• 37:33
  most baffling, unfair injustice in human history, the brutal
• 37:37
  death of the spotless Son of God, in order to achieve your
• 37:40
  eternal salvation. How might he be using the
• 37:43
  specific, unfixable, crooked things in your daily life right
• 37:46
  now? Those uncontrollable
• 37:48
  frustrations, the terrifying diagnosis, the rebellious child,
• 37:51
  the career set back. Perhaps they are not signs of
• 37:54
  your failure. Perhaps they're not problems you
• 37:57
  need to fix with more rules and more anxiety.
• 37:59
  What if they are the very instruments God is using to pry
• 38:02
  your tight fingers off the idol of control, to draw you away
• 38:06
  from trusting yourself and to lead you into true, lasting
• 38:09
  freedom? That changes the entire
• 38:11
  landscape of our suffering. It changes everything.
• 38:13
  Thank you for joining us for this deep dive on reformed
• 38:15
  thinking. We will catch you next time.