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Mistakes ourselves and trial and error. And as Solomon writes, the book of Ecclesiastes is a way to encourage us to seek after wisdom without the mistakes, and to take it from those who have found wisdom in life through making the mistakes themselves and encouraging us likewise. And we call the alternative to wisdom foolishness. Sometimes we don’t typically use those words. Today we might say something like ignorance or in some translations, if you if you read this morning out of chapter ten, it will even say stupidity. And Solomon’s desire for us in chapter ten is just one thought. If you come to this chapter and you read it and you walk away thinking this, I don’t want to be foolish, then you’ve got all that chapter ten contains. Solomon goes on and describes, even in verse one, dead flies make a perfume’s oil stink. No one wants to buy that, right? And so a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor. Recognizing for our lives. Just a little foolishness. Can can mess up a lot of our our character and the projection of our life. A lot of them mistakes that we can make can be very costly. And so Solomon encourages us in this chapter. He just says, listen, what we are after in this whole book. If you’ve read all the way to the end, we’re down to the last few chapters. What we’re seeking is not foolishness. We want wisdom. And he goes on to describe throughout the rest of the chapter.
And I’m just going to look at this quickly for us, because Solomon’s theme, like I said, is just it’s just wisdom. We don’t want foolishness. And so he he starts off in this chapter in verse four, he he breaks the chapter into four sections. And he just points out for us particular individuals in life who have lived life foolishly, and he just describes what that looks like, so that in the end you walk away thinking, man, I don’t want that for my life. And so he talks about rulers. If the rulers temper rises against you, do not abandon your position, because composure, all should say, always creates great offenses. There is an evil I have seen under the sun, like an arrow which goes forth from the ruler. Folly is set in many exalted places, while rich men sit in humble places. I have seen slaves riding on horses and princes walking like slaves on the land. And so he’s saying, even rulers, they act foolishly. But we want to avoid the foolishness. And he talks about workers, those who conduct a job in this world. He who digs a pit may fall into it, and a serpent may bite him who breaks through a wall. He who quarries stones may be hurt by them, and he who splits logs may be endangered by them. It’s foolish if the axe is dull and he does not sharpen his edge, then he must exert more strength.
Wisdom has the advantage of giving success. If the serpent goes on bites, that’s not good. We’ll just end there. If the serpent bites before it’s charmed, is what it says, then it’s no good to the charmer. In verse 12, he talks about the talker, those who can’t control the tongue, and he says, words from the mouth of a wise man are gracious, while the lips of a fool consume him. The beginning of his talking is folly, and the end of it is wicked. Madness at the fool multiplies words. No man knows what will happen. And who can tell him what will come after him. The toil of a fool so wearies him that he does not even know how to go to a city. That means what you want to be around if you want to find wisdom. Is those quiet old guys, right? Those who? Those who talk a lot tend to stumble over their words. And he talks last about just citizens of a country. He’s saying this is what foolishness looks like. Woe to you all land. Whose king is Aladdin? Whose princes feast in the morning? Blessed are you, O land, whose king is of nobility, and whose princes eat at the appropriate time for strength and not for drunkenness. Through indolence. And the rafters sag and through slackness, the house leaks. Men prepare a meal for enjoyment, and wine makes life marrying money as the answer to everything.
So he’s saying in this passage of Scripture, Kings aren’t taking their leadership seriously, and people in the home aren’t taking care of their home. And so homes are falling apart in verse 20, furthermore, in your bed chamber, I don’t I don’t know why he says that for bedroom, but that’s what I started calling my room bedroom this week. It sounds cool right in my bed. I’m headed to the bed chamber, dear. See you later. Do not curse a king and in your sleeping rooms do not curse a rich man, for a bird of the heavens will carry the sound, and the winged creature will make the matter known. And so he’s giving all sorts of wisdom for us as individuals, whether you’re a citizen, whether you work, whether you’re a ruler, whether you’re a talker, there’s all sorts of wisdom in life for us to receive. But God’s desire for all of us is that we do not live foolishly. No one desires to be a fool. And when you look at this on the passage of Scripture and the context of which it’s written, it’s very easy for us to say, you know, I definitely do not want to live this way. No one wakes up in the morning and says, you know what? This is the day that I desire to be foolish. I want to live ignorantly today. But, you know, foolishness isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s something that gradually takes place in our lives.
Gradually happens as our heart is reflected in a world that desires to live apart from God. No one wakes up one day, is a good person, and the next day desires to be a murderer, a thief, or struggle with addiction. But yet foolish things happen. The question we ask ourselves is we look at this text what we should seek within our our own lives to discover, as Solomon talks about foolishness, as how does a person get their. I mean, I look at it on paper and I see foolish things people have done. And I can certainly say that I don’t want to live that way. But if I’m being honest with my own life, even when I look at other people’s ignorance, there are times where I just live foolishly. What’s up with that? How? How does one even begin to live a foolish life? And and why do we choose foolishness? And Solomon says very opening of this chapter. We skipped over it as we read the direction through which foolishness comes. It’s really a matter of the heart. A wise man. A wise man’s heart directs him towards the right. But the foolish man’s heart directs him towards the left. And what Solomon is saying to us in this passage of Scripture is he’s describing foolishness as that foolishness is an indicator of a bad heart. Foolishness as reflection of what’s taking place on the inside, now lived on the outside. And what Solomon is saying to us, and recognizing that a heart can be foolish is, is that he’s agreeing with what the rest of Scripture communicates and teaches us as people.
When you read about the condition of the heart within Scripture, what you discover is that we aren’t good people who occasionally choose bad things, but that we’re sinful and fallen people who occasionally choose good things. When you read within the context of Scripture, it says this in Jeremiah 17 nine, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. In Genesis chapter three and verse five, you have the description that God’s given to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are told to go into the garden, be fruitful, multiply, subdue the earth man, be great people, and just display God’s glory is what he says. He breathes into him, his breath of life so that his spirits within them. They reflect his goodness in this world, and he gives them one command, one rule to obey. Do not eat of the tree we call sometimes an apple tree. I don’t believe that I like pears, so I think it’s a pear tree. You can make it up. Whatever you want. Whatever you like. Pineapples. How’s that pineapple tree? And he tells them, don’t eat of the tree. Because in the moment that you do, you’ll know the difference between good and evil. And in the context of when it states the difference between good and evil in verse five, what what the Bible is declaring for us is not only will, will Adam and Eve know the difference between right and wrong, but they’re going to declare it to God what is right and wrong meaning God.
You no longer make the rules, but we’ve become our own king of our own domain, and we’re going to tell you what is right and wrong. And so he says in verse five, God knows that your eyes will be open as soon as you eat of it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil. If you were to back up and read in this text just two verses previous to this, in chapter three and verse three, God gives a warning to Adam and Eve. He says, in the moment that you eat of the fruit, you shall surely what? Die. And we read in the context of Scripture, when we talk about the word death, we’re not saying is that you cease to exist. The warning that Adam and Eve is giving, or God is giving to Adam and Eve, is that they will be separated from him. When the Bible talks about death, what it means is separation and what it’s saying to Adam and Eve. The moment you disobey me is the moment that you’re separated from me in relationship. The very reason for which you were created, you have denied. And so you die. And the struggle with us as people, as we look at this passage of Scripture and we recognize this, that God in the beginning of the Bible created us in his image.
We reflect God’s goodness and glory. But in this passage of Scripture, what’s happened in the lives of Adam and Eve is that they shook their fists at God and they said to God, while you created us for this reason, God, we desire to be our own king. And in the goodness for which God made them, they become self made rulers. God never created us for that. As always, created us for community to be one with him and each other, to glorify him with our lives and to lift one another up. And rather than live as community, what’s happened in the life of Adam and Eve is that they’ve become independent. And they’ve set themselves up on their self-made thrones. And still having the reflection of God’s glory in their lives. They’ve now also been separated from him. And their heart that was originally designed to honor and glorify the Lord has been made to honor and glorify himself. Whatever self made pleasure they desire, that’s what they seek after. And the entire book of Ecclesiastes describes self made pleasure after self made pleasure, which men desire to pursue apart from God. And Solomon gets to this passage of Scripture and he says to us, it’s foolishness. Your heart may at times still reflect the goodness of God because you were created in his glory, but it has fallen.
It’s dead. It’s been separated from the very one you were created to know. And in that. We lose life. We lose relationship, we lose God. And so Solomon is saying to us in this passage of Scripture in Ecclesiastes chapter ten and verse two. The wise man. His heart. His heart is a reflection of God’s glory. His heart is a reflection of God’s goodness. The reason he’s choosing wisdom over foolishness is because he’s found the solution to a godly heart. And the fool. The reason the fool wonders from God is because he’s still living that self-made, independent, shake your fist at God lifestyle. He hasn’t become humble. He hasn’t submitted to him. He hasn’t allowed the Lord to be king and in due time exalt him. And it’s foolishness. Bible goes on and even describes the scenario in the lives of two individuals. Taking Jeremiah, talking about the deceitful heart, looking at Genesis, where the heart has fallen and died in separation from God. Both David and Paul comment on it. David says in Psalm 51, in sin my mother conceived me. And so what David is saying in this passage of Scripture is not that his mother had him in some sort of sinful way, but that the sin nature through which was passed on from Adam and Eve has been passed on to him at the moment he was conceived. That heart, that death that Adam and Eve went through, went through all mankind.
And so that separation and alienation from God, that desire to to live a self made, ruled life apart from the Lord and to glorify and self rather than in God. It’s in him from the moment of birth. And you think about the goodness of what King David even was in this world, and how much is written about him just in the Old Testament. And you think if there was a godly individual, it’s got to be David. And David says, no. From the very get go of life my heart wandered and it lived in foolishness. Oh, you don’t have to be wise to even know that. You just have to have kids, right? I don’t remember. We had Grayson at one year old man. He was the best kid ever. And then he hit two. And then it all went to pot after that. Oh, man. What happened? Genesis happened. And Paul the apostle Paul, who’s probably done more for Christianity in all of history than any other person. And he says in Romans chapter seven, but I see a different law. And the members of my body, he’s talking about this war being created in God’s image and submitting himself to Christ. But there’s there’s still a war existing within him for which he desires to make himself king and tell God what’s up. And it says in verse 23, I see a different law, and the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, which is in my members.
Wretched man that I am. Who will set me free from the body of this death? And so Paul recognized that his heart with Adam and Eve died, that his heart separated from the Lord and his desire, his desires to know him. But he wages this war between wisdom and foolishness, submitting to the Lord, knowing God’s will for him is far greater than anything he wants from his self. Yet he still struggles. He still desires to escape that battle. We all come to this solution in life or this problem, excuse me? In life where we we look at this moment as Solomon’s described, we look at our heart. We recognize, you know, I know what foolishness looks like at at times. I still choose foolishness. How in the world do I escape this foolishness? How in the world do I start living for wisdom in life? And you know, the solution that many people have come up with is a religious lifestyle. People have attempted to mask their foolishness with religion. I got to tell you, when Jesus showed up on the scene, he says to us in these passages of Scripture that religion, religion isn’t, isn’t a solution at all. All it is, is a Band-Aid to a cure that you need far more Band-Aids than you can handle. Meaning if you’ve if you’ve got cancer of the heart.
And that’s what the Bible is talking about here, a Band-Aid doesn’t fix the problem. Religion doesn’t fix the problem. It only masks it. It only covers up the very root of where the problem exists. Religion has outward conformity and what Jesus needs to work on, it tells us in this passage is the heart, because out of the heart flows the wellsprings of life. The reason we act foolish in this world is because it’s dealing with the sickness of the heart. And so no matter how much you mask it with religious conduct, if the heart doesn’t change, then the foolishness isn’t cured and religion just masks it. And Jesus said that. Matthew chapter five and verse 20, he comes before the Pharisees and the Jewish people of his time. And I got to tell you, when you read this passage of Scripture, here’s the way you look at the Pharisees. If you’ve read the Bible today and you read about the Pharisees and what Jesus says in the Gospels, your thought of the Pharisees are going to be, oh, those guys are wicked. They’re bad, you know. But if you understand the context that Jesus is writing and saying in this passage of Scripture about the Pharisees, there’s a totally different mindset. The Pharisees are looked upon as the most religious, God honoring, God loving people in the community. I mean, these people are so godly that they sacrifice everything to honor this God that they claim to be worshiping.
And so when they walk down the aisles, it’s sort of like being awestruck by these Pharisee leaders of the community. They are the prominent people in Jewish land. And Jesus comes before these religious powerhouses. And he says in Matthew chapter five and verse 24, I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And what Jesus did for everybody in this passage just gave them a blanket of hopelessness. Wait a minute. We’ve idolized these people. We’ve looked up to them. They’ve lived every law to the T, and if they don’t have a chance and entering heaven based on their religion, we don’t have a chance. Jesus even goes on and says to the Pharisees in Matthew 23. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees! You hypocrites! For you. Clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self indulgence. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites for you like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead man’s bones and uncleanness. So you two outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you’re full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. And then that context. Jesus describes religion. He’s saying they’ve wore the mask perfectly. You come to the graveside and you see this beautiful, polished grave of beauty recognizing some individual who has passed away. But there’s one thing true of the grave that still rests.
True. These Pharisees that while on the outside it is a beautiful and ornate decoration honoring them in their death, it’s still dead. And how, no matter how well you can make that outward mask look on the inside of your heart, it’s still dead. People choose religion to mask and deal with the heart. But what Jesus says is we consider such a thing that it is impossible to live up to his standards. He is a holy God. In this world today. We don’t necessarily operate in the context of Pharisees, but what you hear people often say is when you talk about heaven, relationship with God, living for him with for eternity, and you say, how do you get to heaven? Most people will tell you this. Well, they obey the Ten Commandments. And I’ll tell you this. No you don’t. No you don’t. You don’t even know what they are. If you say that. Do not lie. Do not cheat. Do not steal. Do not covet. We’re all guilty. No one lives those. The purpose of the law becomes different for us. I’ll explain to that what that is in just a moment. But the interesting thing about the Ten Commandments, there was a group of individuals in Jewish history, not the Pharisees led for the Jewish people. There was a smaller group called the Sadducees, and the Sadducees always joke and say, they’re sad, you see. But they were the small group.
Everybody. Nobody wanted to be them. And, well, a few people did, I guess. But but they only followed the Torah, which is the first five books of the Old Testament, which includes the law. Interesting. When you study this, this the Sadducees in the in the first five books of the Old Testament, the book of Exodus, you have the Ten Commandments. But the unique thing about the theology of the Sadducees that set them apart from any other religious group at the time is the Sadducees didn’t believe in an afterlife. And the reason is because everywhere you see that the Ten Commandments are written within the first five books of the Bible, there is no promise of eternity found within those books. If you obey those laws, never does the Bible say you’re going to live for eternity. You can look it up throughout all of the Bible every time the Ten Commandments are talked about. There is no promise of eternity after that. And so the purpose of the law and living it isn’t to get you into heaven. It isn’t to fix your heart. It isn’t to to show you that right relationship with God. In fact, the Bible tells us very differently. Religion and rules don’t fix the heart. It only masks the problem. Religion and rules is like obsessing over not doing wrong. Do you know the surefire way of doing something wrong? Obsessing about not doing it wrong. You got one sin in your life that just keeps robbing you.
When you obsess about not doing that sin, you will do that sin. Religion may mask the problem, but it doesn’t provide the solution. Bible tells us. And how do we fix our heart? We would ask that question this morning. We like to say for us today, we we didn’t come here this morning just to hear about how bad we are or all the problems that we have, and I don’t want to conclude that way at all. What I’m more interested in is the solution. God created me with this heart. When this heart lives foolishly, it’s an indicator that it’s wandering from him. God created me to know him. My desire is for that foolish heart to be adjusted, that I may experience that relationship with him for which I was created. How do we do that? Let me tell you in chapter ten of this section, Solomon doesn’t present the answer to that question. He merely talks about the problem. But he goes on throughout this book and he finally concludes in chapter 12 what the solution is. Oh, excuse me. Let me skip that for just a moment. He concludes what the solution is for us. Let me tell you this. Before I get to that, you can ask this question and go back for just a minute. We can ask this question in our minds. What is what is the purpose of the law? We talk about religion for just a moment.
And and we know that religion is made up of laws. And the purpose of the laws is to show us the goodness of, of of God’s holiness. And some people live those laws in order to, to bring a right standing before God. But this is what the Bible says is the purpose of the law. If you’re a believer in Christ or you’re investigating about the Lord, I can tell you that there’s two chapters in the Bible that’s going to help you get it right about what a relationship is with God. It’s Romans chapter three and Galatians chapter three. If you don’t learn them by heart, it’s a place that you should reflect within your mind to know, to go to. When you’re dealing with religious friends who think that they’re just going to merit God’s favor by the way that they live lives, if they could just do it good enough. This is the place in the Bible that you want to show them to say, hey, what you’re doing is impossible. It says in Romans chapter three and verse 19, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law. And this is why. So that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God, because by the works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
And so what it’s saying is, God made this law for us to obey. God gave the Ten Commandments, and we certainly want to follow the Ten Commandments. But what the purpose of the law is isn’t to justify your life before God. All it does is say you’re guilty. God is holy. His standard is perfect. You can’t live up to that. If you try that, your heart will never, never succeed. It’s dead. It’s fallen from him. And the law demonstrates that you’re guilty. And in Galatians it says the same thing. No one is justified by the law before God. And so? So the solution is how? How do we fix the heart? How was it cured? God if you created this heart to connect with you. Lord, where’s the answer to this? How can I live wisely? Solomon says, let me read in Ecclesiastes for just a minute in verse 13. That’s the whole story, says he sums up all of Ecclesiastes right here. Here’s the whole story of of this book. Why I wrote it here. Now is my final conclusion fear God and obey his commandments, for this is everyone’s duty. Proverbs one seven says this the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And the thought that Solomon carries in both of this is not that you be afraid of God. We all need to recognize that one day we will stand before that great judge of our lives.
But the idea of fear within scriptural context isn’t just to be afraid of him, but to carry this reverential all of his authority and power over your life. And I tell you this morning that when we look at passages of Scripture like this, we read in the Old Testament, we carry the understanding that God is still revealing his truth to us. For instance, the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed meaning the New Testament completes the story of what the Old Testament is about. Would you guys agree with that this morning? The New Testament is the continuation of what the Old Testament contains. And so Paul, when he gets to First Corinthians, he begins to talk about the same concept that Solomon says here. And he points out to us why the fear of the Lord becomes so significant for us in our lives. He says in Second Corinthians chapter five and verse 11, therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. Paul is about to explain to us why the fear of the Lord is so important in this context of Scripture. But he’s saying as he begins this passage, the fear of the Lord is so significant in understanding what Paul or what Solomon had said in the passages of Scripture previous to this. It’s so important to understand that not only not only am I applying it to my life. But I want other people to know about it.
And this is why. In verse 16. Therefore, from now on, we recognize no one according to the flesh, even though we have known Christ according to the flesh. Yet now we know him in this way no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things passed away. Behold, new things have come. All this from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Verse 19. It goes on to say that God is forgiving sins in us through Christ. And what Paul is saying in verse 16 is we used to live life according to the flesh religiously. We used to carry this conduct. We saw Jesus come on the scene. We used to even think about him in that same context. But what we learned is that Jesus was so much more than just this religion that we thought that we knew earned us favor with God. And what we found in verse 17 is, is that in Christ, because of his death and resurrection, because of his payment for us in Christ, we have become totally new creatures. It’s not dependent upon self. But if you’re in Jesus, if you’ve trusted in Christ with your life, God gives you this promise that that heart of wickedness that strayed from God. God makes that heart new in him. And so the solution that Solomon points us to in the fear of the Lord. The reason that Paul talks about that in this passage of Scripture is that we recognize our need for salvation and the hopeless state that we’re in, because one day we will come before a holy God and stand in account for the things that we’ve done.
And as Adam and Eve has revealed to us, when they sinned against that holy God, the problem that they created was death. And what death talks about is separation. And what separation means is eternal. God created you to live forever. The moment God designed you, you would live for eternity somewhere. And when Adam and Eve sinned against God and he talks about death, he’s talking about separation from his presence forever. But God’s desire. As for his goodness to be experienced in your life, in that relationship, to be forever. And so Solomon and Paul say in this passage of Scripture, the fear of the Lord is so important because we need to recognize in our lives we’re going to stand accounted accountable to this great God. And this God and this message that we proclaim is that he gives us a new heart. He gives us the opportunity of experiencing that relationship before him. A lack of wisdom in our lives isn’t about being intelligent. We say it this way in church. We’ve said it about Ecclesiastes. A lack of wisdom isn’t isn’t a smart problem. It’s about a start problem. And the mask that we’ve often carried is a mask of of religion and saying to God, God, I’m proving myself before you, and I’m fixing my own heart apart from you, and I’m going to show you how great I can be in the solution which Christ gives in this passage of Scripture is that you can’t fix your own heart.
But my desire is to give you a new heart and you become a new creation. It’s not about being smart to be wise. It’s about where you start, and it’s about coming to the Lord and fear and reverence of him, knowing we’re going to be accountable and saying, God, I’m trusting in what you’ve done for me. Lord, give me a new heart in you. Wisdom isn’t about. Being smart. It’s about where you start. Bible goes on and tells us as well. This passage of Scripture that Jesus, he’s the rescuing Savior. Jesus gives you a new future apart from your past. Jesus is giving you a new heart that the purpose of the law is to prove to you can’t earn God’s favor. You can’t fix your broken heart. And so rather than run in self made efforts, you you run from those efforts and you run to the Lord to be rescued. You don’t fix yourself. Jesus does. The idea of a heart that’s transformed in the Bible is about a heart that surrenders before the Lord. He makes all things new. The context of this passage when it says that you are a new creature in Christ in verse 17, literally is is the Greek word metamorphosis.
And so it’s saying, What Jesus does in you is literally a miracle. You’ve seen the butterfly go through the cocoon. It’s the same thing. This ugly thing goes into this tight coffin looking thing and it comes out just beautiful. I don’t I don’t even know how it happens. I don’t know, science knows how it happens, but but the result of that is just beautiful and saying in context to us and our relationship with the Lord, you don’t have to worry about making your heart beautiful. It’s a metamorphosis. You turn it over to the Lord, and in that, God transforms you in such a way that you’re beautiful. It’s just like the movie said, I want to be a beautiful butterfly, right? And you get to be that in Christ. It’s not about being smart to be wise. It’s about where you start. Second is this in order to fix the heart? A lack of intelligence or a lack of wisdom isn’t an intelligence problem. It’s a will problem. So the problem with Adam and Eve when their life became foolish wasn’t that they weren’t smart. It’s just they shook their fist at God and turned their backs upon him and said, God, I’m going to do it my way. Which is a better way now? It’s not an intelligence problem, it’s a will problem. It’s saying to us as people listening, you don’t need all the wisdom in the world to handle everything in life.
All you need is the Lord. If you come to the Lord, God directs you in each phase of your life that you go through. I have to have the answers. What you need is the Lord. It’s not an intelligence problem. It’s a will problem. Foolishness works like this, where we get really good in our foolishness at blaming everyone else. I’m acting like an idiot because they did this to me. My kids were this way, so this justifies my stupidity. My my spouse did this so I’m allowed to be ignorant right now. They did this to me and so I’m going to hate them. That way’s better. And so we justify or we live foolishly and we always we live in the in the future context. We think in two years it’s going to be better. But you know, when you when you live wisely, you get to, to bloom right where you are in service to the Lord. And understand why he created you in the circumstance through which you are. It’s not an intelligence problem. It’s a will problem. The Bible says that. Galatians six seven. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. Let’s just set a different way. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When you choose not to fear the Lord and reverence of him, listen. Don’t be deceived in that God’s not going to be mocked by your choice.
For whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. The idea is this our heart lives in foolishness. You saw in Romans seven where Paul says, O wretched man that I am, who? Who will help me from this body of death? Solomon talks about wisdom and life. The way that we live wisely deals with the condition of the heart and the way that the heart is fixed, as we’ve seen within Scripture isn’t by our own efforts. It’s not by religion, it’s by the Lord. We recognize that we’re accountable to him, but we can’t do anything to save our own selves because we already stand dead in judgment before the Lord. And so what God’s desire is knowing that he created us for eternity, knowing that he created us for a relationship, is to redeem our souls, to give us hope, to give us joy with him forever. And that happens in Christ. Christ has come. Christ has given himself for you. Christ has offered life to you. And the promise that if you trust in him, he metamorphoses that that heart, he turns it new. It thrives in Christ. And then it tells us in Galatians, keep surrendering. Trust in Jesus and keep surrendering. Listen, if you want to be wise in life, get off your throne. And keep surrendering.
Listen, we say it’s far better to do that than to do anything that you think is good for your life anyway. Because what God desires for you is far greater than anything you could desire for yourself. Humble yourself in due time and he will lift you up. The future that God calls you to is far greater than any future that you can imagine for yourself. Keep surrendering. The foolish heart shakes his fist at God and says, God, I will tell you right from wrong. But the wise heart sees the beauty of the Lord, and they keep surrendering. Paul says in this passage of Scripture. To those who know him. To those whose hearts belong to the Lord, and they trusted in Him as Savior. That spirit that he’s given in you, that breath of life that he’s called you to, that eternal hope through which you have in him. Just keep sowing to that spirit. Allow the Lord to work on your heart and direct your path. So here’s a conclusion. To live wisely, you need a godly heart. Foolish living is a reflection of an unyielding and sinful heart, a heart that is fallen. And religion doesn’t fix it. It only masks the problem. With the wrong solution. And the idea is this. Do you know Jesus? Have you given the time to him to take your heart, and the proof that you’ve tried to validate your own self-worth before him and saying, God, I can’t do this.
And God, I know that I don’t even have to do this. That you’ve died for me. To set me free from this body of death. God help me transform my heart. Jesus, thank you for dying for my sin. God make me new. I’m just believing in that promise because I don’t want to fight this fight anymore. And God. Not only am I trusting in you to save me, but God, I’m also surrendering to you, knowing that I’m. I’m sick of the foolish living that I’m having. I’m sick of the self-made life that I’ve given. And I know that wisdom is found in you. Because God, you are life. God work in my heart. This is why Solomon says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Because a foolish heart will not live wisely. Apart from God. The question we should start with. Every day we wake up to begin a new day, knowing that the road in front of us lies two choices foolishness or wisdom. We should ask ourselves, have we given our heart to God? Think about where we are this morning. Some of us have come to church and we feel dead inside. Some of us, some of us are coming to church. And we we love the Lord, and we’re always wanting to grow with him. But we all are in the same boat. Whether we succeed, whether we live wisely or not depends on one question are we surrendering our heart before the Lord because the promise is he makes it new?