Today Solomon says better is “the day of death than the day of one’s birth; better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting…Sorrow is better than laughter, for by a sad countenance the heart is made better”. What?! 😳 This sounds nothing like what the world teaches. I thought I deserved to be happy all of the time. Why all this doom and gloom? 🤔
Solomon explains that “Surely oppression destroys a wise man’s reason”. See, the Lord doesn’t want us to trust in our own capabilities, He wants us to depend on Him. God knows when everything is going great and we are experiencing nothing but pleasure, we tend to forget our need for the Lord. Solomon teaches us that the Lord is sovereign over our pleasure and our pain. “Consider the work of God; for who can make straight what He has made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: Surely God has appointed the one as well as the other, so that man can find out nothing that will come after him.” The Lord desires for His people to walk by faith, trust that He is good, and that His Word is true. He often uses pain and suffering to teach His people to do this.
We saw this when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness. The Lord used that difficult time to teach His children to trust Him. Moses said in Deut. 8:2-3, “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Moses went on to warn the people in Deut. 8 not to forget the Lord or His Word when they enter the promised land.
Solomon teaches us that to live wisely we are to do as he says in Proverbs 3:5-6, whether a season of pleasure or a season of pain. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
Tomorrow we end the Kingdom Era 🎉 and begin the Divided Kingdom Era 👑👑so keep reading.
(Ecclesiastes 7:1-11:6)
#bibleliteracymovement #chronologicalbibleteaching
Chronological Bible in Layman's Terms 