Sharp Goads and Hard Nails
Note: This sermon is a summary of Ecclesiastes 7-11.
Please turn in your Bible to Ecclesiastes 12. I want us to begin reading at verse 9:
Not only was the Teacher wise, but also he imparted knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs. The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true. The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails‑‑given by one Shepherd. Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.
I believe Solomon is saying here is that sometimes in dealing with life we tend toward overkill. We encounter a problem, so we buy three or four books on the subject, attend a couple of seminars, check out what our favorite media preacher has to say about it, perhaps even go see a professional counselor. But often instead of becoming an expert we end up confused because the advice we get from one source differs from another. Sometimes, he says, what we need rather than an exhaustive analysis or logical treatise, is just a pithy proverb which captures truth in a clever, sometimes even a shocking way.
Proverbs have a way of penetrating our armor and grabbing our attention. They either goad us into action or nail us to the wall. But we must not force them into a tight and rigid mold. Rather, they must be treated as beautiful works of art. They are music. They are poetry.[i]
The second half of Ecclesiastes, particularly chapters 7‑11, consists largely of proverbs which Solomon used to convey the realities of life viewed from the bottom side of the rug. Many weeks could profitably be spent working our way slowly through these pages, but I have chosen instead to offer today just a sampling of Solomon’s wisdom. My encouragement to you would be to study the rest on your own, or with a guide like Charles Swindoll’s Living on the Ragged Edge. The first sharp goad I have chosen is from chapter 7:
Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you. (7:21,22)
This is a proverb designed for people who are overly concerned about what others think, and that includes a lot of us. Certainly there is merit in being aware of other people’s opinions. The person who is oblivious to or scornful of criticism is likely to end up with few friends and a lot of enemies, but a good thing like “sensitivity to others” can be carried much too far. Many people live their whole lives in virtual fear that someone may disapprove of what they say, how they pray, what they wear, how they keep house, etc. They not only pay attention to every word people say but even to every look people give them. Their self‑esteem is based entirely on the feedback they get from others.
This is unhealthy. What we hear from others will sometimes be unrealistically good. There are a lot of people willing to tell us what we want to hear in order to get what they want. Young ladies need to be particularly skeptical about the lavish praise young men tend to heap on them. Wisdom has a filtering system that rejects flattery and helps one avoid the pitfalls of gullibility.[ii] On the other hand, what we hear will often be unrealistically harsh. As an example Solomon mentions the problem of the cursing servant. This servant stands for someone close to you—perhaps a family member, close friend, a fellow‑employee, or a schoolmate.
Some of you are living your life intimidated by criticism from someone close, but wisdom dictates that you learn to handle that criticism well. At times that may mean you should consider the source and dismiss it. During my years in the pastorate I have learned that there are always a few people who can’t be pleased. No matter what you do or what you say, they’ll always take the opposite position, and word will come back to you that so‑and‑so is saying such‑and‑such. As hard as it is sometimes, I just have to say, “The cursing servant is just living up to his reputation.” I can’t let one professional critic discourage me from ministering to the others. At other times handling criticism well may mean accepting it and making necessary changes in my behavior, especially if the person dishing it out is someone who has earned the right to be heard.
By the way, Solomon wisely adds that we should examine our own habits when criticism comes our way: “Many times you yourself have cursed others.” Often people who are insecure and constantly worried about the criticism of others are themselves overly critical people. They live with so much self‑criticism that it is only natural to treat others the same way. Solomon sees this as hypocritical and suggests that it is better to live life without getting bogged down too much with criticism—either receiving it or dishing it out.
The bottom line is that the Body of Christ would function a lot better if we all paid more attention to God’s Word and less to the words of those around us.
Another sharp goad is used in verse 26 of chapter 7:
More bitter than death is the woman who is a snare. (7:26)
One of the greatest temptations on the bottom side of the rug is to fulfill our universal need for intimacy in the wrong way with the wrong person. As we evaluate this proverb, let’s do it without focusing too much on gender. Solomon was a man, so when he warns about illicit relationships he naturally warns about the opposite sex. But there is no need for us to think that this proverb has any less application to men than to women. In fact, the point could best be stated this way, “The wrong kind of intimate relationship is more bitter than death.”
The intimacy warned about here can be either premarital or extramarital. Our youth pastor has been doing everything in his power to convey to our teenagers that sexual intimacy should be reserved for marriage. He’s been using a curriculum entitled, “Why Wait?” The why is answered with a slew of good reasons, the most important being, “Because God says so.” But almost as important is the reason related to consequences. Recently I read a secular study of young teenagers who had become sexually active. Let me tell you, if they were advertising a product, the manufacturer might as well shut down. One after another said they became sexually active through various kinds of peer pressure and it didn’t live up to its billing.
Well, let me assure you it does live up to its billing when experienced with one’s life partner in the bonds of marriage, but these kids simply weren’t ready for the commitment, the communication, and the emotional intimacy that is the necessary atmosphere for physical love to flourish. Nor were they able to handle the guilt that always accompanies inappropriate sexual relationships in one form or another. Too many teenagers learn too late that seduction into premarital intimacy can be more bitter than death.
But Solomon was probably thinking primarily of illicit relationships after marriage. As a man who had over 1,000 women in his lifetime, he speaks from experience when he testifies, “I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare.” Out in the work world, in the neighborhood, in academia, at the health club, and occasionally even in the church, there are women and men on the prowl, looking for vulnerable people who may have their guard down.
These seductive people don’t wear the letter A around their neck. In fact, they often come across as caring and compassionate, they have time to listen to you (time your busy spouse doesn’t have), they may have a certain care‑free attitude that appeals to you when you feel trapped by your income, your responsibilities, your children, or your age. Quickly friendship turns into emotional attachment, compassion into physical involvement, fun into sensuality. But the wisest man who ever lived says, “The one who pleases God will escape such a person.” When the first red flags go up, when you realize that being with this person is meeting needs that only your wife or husband should meet, it’s time to head for the door. If you don’t, you’re asking for an experience that in the end will be more bitter than death. I could share with you literally dozens of testimonies from Christian people who decided they had to find out for themselves. They would say to you that the “affair” is a myth, an empty mirage.
A third goad or nail moves from the personal to the political:
“When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong.” (8:11).
In other words, when the judicial system bogs down, crime increases. I believe strongly that all the efforts to understand and deal with crime in this country are fundamentally flawed. Some tell us that crime is a function of environment; others point to heredity or family deterioration; others suggest the fault lies with the penal system and the fact that we are not rehabilitating criminals as we should. Still others take the opposite tack and say the problem is we don’t have enough prisons; the key to dealing with crime is to put all the criminals away.
Solomon, however, says that one important factor is missing from all these equations—judicial delay. When a criminal knows that even if he’s caught the chances are that he won’t be convicted, and even if convicted, he won’t be sentenced until sometime later, and even when sentenced, the appeal process will keep him out of prison indefinitely, and even if sentenced to death, he has a 95% chance of dying of old age before the death sentence is carried out, why should we expect anything but more crime?
In Friday morning’s paper there was an article about the execution of a man who killed a Louisiana state trooper. The crime was committed in 1976 and sentence was passed in 1977, but only after 10 delays of the scheduled execution over several decades was the sentence carried out. Without commenting at all on the merits of that particular case, because I am ignorant of it, I can say with no fear of contradiction that capital punishment carried out like that can have no possible deterrence on crime.
The reason crime increases when sentences are not carried out expeditiously is that it’s universal human nature to pay less attention to long‑range consequences than to short‑range consequences. You wouldn’t think of grabbing a hot saucepan with your bare hands for fear of being burned, but millions of Americans cook themselves silly in the quest for a perfect tan, even though they are warned constantly that the results are certain to lead eventually to skin cancer, which is far worse than a burn. The key word is “eventually.” We have an enormous capacity to put the inevitable out of our mind if there’s a delay between the act and the consequence. Every delay in the trial, sentencing and punishment of a crime emboldens the criminal to take more risk.
Now I am not arguing against due process; I believe that even hardened criminals have civil rights. Nor am I advocating the Iranian approach to justice—if they catch a thief, they cut his hand off on the spot; drug dealers are executed on the spot. But if we’re ever going to get a handle on crime in this country, it will only be after we have narrowed the time significantly between the commission of a crime and its punishment.
By the way, I believe this proverb also has some potential application to parental discipline. When a child hears his mother say, “You’re going to get it when your father comes home from his trip next week,” do you really think that puts the fear of God into his heart? Hardly. He probably says under his breath, “Ten to one she’ll forget the whole thing or dad will be too tired to do anything.” When a child misbehaves, he needs to be disciplined appropriately, but even more importantly he must be disciplined in a timely manner so that the connection between the behavior and the discipline is clearly implanted in his mind and heart.
Now here’s a hard nail for you:
A live dog is better off than a dead lion. (9:4)
This particular proverb comes in the middle of a lengthy discussion about death. At the beginning of chapter 9 Solomon meditates upon the common destiny of the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who don’t. Their common destiny is death. This is one of the most troubling facts of life and Solomon sees a certain unfairness about it. But he does not despair of life. On the contrary, he observes certain distinct advantages to life, the primary one being that if you are breathing you have hope. Look at verse 4: “Anyone who is among the living has hope‑‑even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!”
We won’t get all we should out of this proverb until we recognize that in those days, dogs were diseased mongrels that ran in packs through city streets, not pampered pets. People feared and loathed them. Nevertheless, Solomon says that a live dog is better than the king of the jungle who is dead. Why? “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.”
This is one of the best passages in the Bible to offer to one who is contemplating suicide. Life may be a terrible drudgery for you right now; relationships may have soured, finances may be non‑existent, and spiritually you may feel far from God, but if you are breathing, there is hope that things may get better. Many people have built success out of the ashes of failure. Relationships can be healed. God is still there and the joy of your salvation can be recovered, but only while you’re alive!
Not only is suicide not the answer; neither is resignation to fatalism. “Whatever your hand finds to do,” he continues in verse 10, “do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” Now as we have observed before, Solomon does not have the advantage of knowing what the NT tells us about life after death. But still his point is a valid one—the only time we have to get anything done under the sun is between now and the grave. So “have a blast while you last,” as my former teacher Kenn Gangel put it. “Whatever you do, do it heartily as unto the Lord” is how Col. 3:23 puts it. Jim Elliot expressed it this way: “Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.” Amen!
Time for a fifth hard nail:
The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong. (9:11,12)
Let’s read verse 9:11: “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” In a sense this verse is a microcosm of the whole book of Ecclesiastes. So much of life is enigmatic and fails to conform to the “rules” we have learned. We’ve been taught that if you want to succeed you have to compete and be aggressive, get up earlier, go to bed later, put in more hours, do unto them before they do unto you. But, says Solomon, it doesn’t always work that way. Nothing is guaranteed.
Jim Ryan, a schoolboy from Wichita, was the fastest miler in the world, but he never won the Olympics. Herb Score, my boyhood baseball idol, was probably the best young pitcher in baseball when at age 23 he was struck by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald, and was never the same pitcher. Long before my time Jim Thorpe, an American Indian, clearly earned his reputation as the greatest athlete of all time. But some racially motivated reporter dug up the fact that he had once played baseball for five dollars a season, and his Olympic gold medals were taken away. Some of the smartest people I know barely have enough to live on because they have chosen to be public school teachers or have gone into ministry, while some of the dumbest, laziest, and most worthless people I know have inherited fortunes or fallen into gilt‑edged investments and live on easy street.
That is how life is, but we shouldn’t despair nor should we quit aiming to be swift, strong, wise, brilliant and learned. We should, however, quit thinking that life owes us anything, or, for that matter, that God owes us anything under the sun. Now if you talk about the long run, that’s a different story. Even Solomon says in 8:12: “Although a wicked man commits a hundred crimes and still lives a long time, I know that it will go better with God‑fearing men, who are reverent before God.” But in the meantime, often it will seem that time and chance play a bigger part in our lives than God’s providence.
Learn to accept disappointment; learn to live with unfairness; don’t allow unanswered questions to turn your heart away from God. Learn to approach life with the wisdom expressed by Andrae Crouch in his song, “Through It All:”
I’ve had many tears and sorrow,
I’ve had questions for tomorrow;
There’ve been times I didn’t know right from wrong
But in ev’ry situation, God gave blessed consolation
That my trials come to only make me strong.
I’ve been to lots of places,
And I’ve seen a lot of faces;
There’ve been times I felt so all alone,
But in my lonely hours,
Yes, those precious, lonely hours
Jesus let me know that I was His Own.
I thank God for the mountains and
I thank Him for the valleys,
I thank Him for the storms He brought me through,
For if I’d never had a problem
I wouldn’t know that He could solve them,
I’d never know what faith in God could do.
Through it all, through it all,
Oh, I’ve learned to trust in Jesus,
I’ve learned to trust in God.
Through it all, through it all,
I’ve learned to depend upon His Word.
I hope you can say that today. A sixth goad or nail is found in 10:1:
Dead flies give perfume a bad smell. (10:1)
This particular proverb may not be a terribly pleasant thought for a Sunday morning, especially for you gals who splashed on a little Chantilly or L’aire de Temp this morning, but I believe there is value in considering it. The entire verse reads, “As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.” Notice this comes right after the statement that “one sinner destroys much good.” The point being made is that it takes far less effort to ruin something than it does to create it. Or perhaps another way to put it is that it’s easier to make a stink than to create sweetness. Flies are insignificant creatures in the context of the total scheme of things. A perfumer’s oil, on the other hand, is a very costly substance created with care and skill. Still the insignificant can spoil the valuable.
There are many illustrations of this in the lives of biblical characters. For example, Adam accepted a piece of fruit from Eve and the whole human race was cursed. Moses’ impatience in striking the rock kept Israel’s greatest prophet and leader from entering the promised land. Achan’s transgression caused the defeat of the whole nation at Ai. Rehoboam’s folly occasioned civil war and led to the division of Israel into two nations. In each case the sin committed seemed so minor, but as the NT puts this same truth, “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.”
We see the same thing happening in our own day and time. A little midnight caper in the Watergate Apartments brought down one of the most powerful political figures in the world. A few drinks and a midnight drive on Chappaquiddick kept another powerful politician out of the White House. Folly is a term we don’t use a lot, but if comes up frequently in Scripture. It suggests a lack of good sense, lack of foresight, failing to realize the consequences of a stupid act before it occurs. A little folly has often outweighed wisdom and honor, and a few dead flies have stunk up a lot of perfume.
Although there are probably many legitimate applications of this proverb, there are two I’d like to zero in on. The fly may be a person. One person who is out of sorts with God can lead a whole group into sin. One person who is negative can put a wet blanket on everyone’s hope. One person who is super‑critical can singlehandedly create an atmosphere of discouragement. Are you a fly in the ointment at your home, at work, or here at church?
Or the fly may be a flaw in one’s character. One fault unchecked or one secret sin cherished can poison a man’s entire life. We need to catch the little foxes that are spoiling the vines before they turn into man‑eating wolves. May I suggest that each of us today choose to swat one fly before it lands in our perfume. Perhaps it is a bad attitude; maybe a bad habit; perhaps a tendency toward being irresponsible or unreliable; maybe an omission of something we should be doing that if not corrected could lead to spiritual deterioration.
The final goad or nail I want us to examine this morning is found in 10:18:
If a man is lazy, the rafters sag. (10:18)
This proverb is not difficult to grasp on the surface, but it deserves more careful attention. There are actually three proverbs here within the course of ten verses, all of which speak of laziness or idleness. The first is this: “If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks.” The reason idleness or laziness is a concern to the Preacher is that one of the common reactions to the unfairness of life (which is one of the key themes in his book), is to adopt a kind of fatalism. Whatever will be, will be. If I’m meant to be successful or happy or productive, I will be; if not, all the effort in the world won’t make me so. No, says Solomon, that is not an appropriate response. While effort alone will not guarantee success, lack of effort will almost certainly guarantee failure.
The same concept is expanded in 11:4: “Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.” In other words, don’t sit around waiting for the most opportune moment to work but be diligent constantly. Think about how this applies to ministry. If we wait until we’re less busy, until we feel right, until just the right moment we will never witness, never serve, and never see results.
Then verse 6: “Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.” Sometimes your effort will go for naught, but the important thing is to be doing with vigor whatever God has given you to do.
Conclusion: I am so analytical and logical in my thought processes that I found myself a little frustrated in preparing this sermon. I don’t gravitate naturally to proverbs—they’re impossible to outline. As a matter of fact, I think we as a nation generally neglect proverbial statements today. In previous generations they played a much more important part, as anyone familiar with Benjamin Franklin and his contemporaries, could attest. In other cultures, such as the Chinese, proverbs are the principal means used to convey the wisdom of the ages.
The Bible is full of proverbs and they have a special place in the spiritual education of God’s people. They grab us and force us to think in categories that are unusual but invaluable. As long as we’re looking at life from the bottom side of the rug, which is as long as we’re this side of eternity, we need to meditate on live dogs and dead flies. I would suggest this morning that each of us take one or two of these proverbs that particularly touches our lives and ask God to prod us with it or nail us with it, whichever the need of the moment may be.
[i] Charles Swindoll, Living on the Ragged Edge, 286.
[ii] Swindoll, 211.