"THE HOLY SPIRIT INSTRUCTS US TO PUT UP WITH CROOKEDNESS AS LONG AS WE LIVE IN THIS FALLEN WORLD."

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 9:5,7
Psalm 143:1,7
Psalm 37:3,4,5
Psalm 10:5,6,7
Hymn 53:1,2

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Solomon says some pretty surprising things in the passage we read together this morning. There’s first of all the second line of our text, where Solomon says that God has made things crooked. That doesn’t sound right to us, for crooked things are the result of sin, are our fault; one cannot fault God for doing wrong! Then there’s vs 16: "do not be overly righteous, nor be overly wise." Really?! Is it possible to be "overly righteous"? Is God’s will for us not that we give no place to sin in our lives at all – be righteous? And now we’re told not to be too particular?? And what are we to make of vs 17: "do not be overly wicked" – does that mean that it’s OK to be a little bit wicked?? Yes, Solomon says some things here that are a bit over the top….

As it turns out, congregation, Solomon’s instruction in our chapter takes seriously the existence and work of God in this broken and fallen world. We live after the fall into sin, and before the full renewal of all things on the last day. That’s the ordinance of God, and so it’s not for us to pretend that we still live in the Paradise of the beginning, or already live in a Paradise Restored. God has us live in a broken world, and that fact, says Solomon, has consequences for the way we view life and for the things we expect of ourselves and of another.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

As I said, Solomon’s words in our text take us by surprise. "Consider the work of God; For who can make straight what He has made crooked?" The phrase "work of God" describes the things God does. It’s a reference to creation, and it’s equally a reference to what God does with His creation ever since the beginning, what we would call God’s providence; God upholds and governs the world He made. "Rain and drought, fruitful years and barren, health and sickness, riches and poverty": these and so much more are all "works of God" that Solomon saw around him and we still see around us day by day.

Concerning this work of God, Solomon asks this question: "who can make straight what God has made crooked?" With that question Solomon characterizes the work of God, acknowledges that in His work God makes some things crooked – and we can’t straighten it out.

The term ‘crooked’ that Solomon uses here appears elsewhere in Scripture to describe perversion (Job 8:3). The prophet Amos quotes the people of his day looking forward to the end of the New Moon because (they say) then we can make "the ephah small and the shekel large," and can "falsify the scales by deceit" (Amos 8:5). Falsify: that’s the same word as in our text. It leaves us with quite a puzzle: how can Solomon say that God has made things false, perverted, crooked? Is that really our God?!

Solomon, brothers and sisters, is not in our text elevating himself above God, evaluating God’s work, and finding it wanting. That is not his point at all. Remember what Solomon just said in chap 6, that the human race is man¸ dirt - and the clay has no right to criticize the Potter. Instead, Solomon is simply familiar with his Bible, and calmly accepts the fact that God allows brokenness, even gives brokenness, in this fallen world.

Think back to the book of Genesis. When God created the world, He gave this evaluation of His work on the sixth day: "it was very good" (1:31). Then came the fall into sin. What, congregation, did God do with the fallen world? God’s decision as to what to do with the fallen world is caught in His statement to the serpent: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed…" (Gen 3:15). "I will put enmity," says God, "I will put war" on this earth. War: we read and hear enough about Iraq to know that war involves a lot of crookedness, brokenness. That’s true of war in the conventional, military sense, and it’s equally true of war in the spiritual sense.

What God ordained to happen with the fallen world involves more than this war between the devil and the Lord, Satan’s people and God’s people. God said to the woman: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children…" (vs 16). Notice: this is God’s work; "I will greatly multiply your sorrow…." To the man God said that the ground was cursed on account of Adam’s sin so that toil and sweat and thorns and thistles would characterize Adam’s lot each day. That, by God’s decree, is what life in this fallen world would be like.

Could it have been different? Undoubtedly, beloved, for God is God – almighty. God in His justice could have destroyed the world on the spot. God could also have directly sent His Son to pay for sin, and in a very short time usher in a Paradise Restored. Nothing is too difficult for the Lord. But He didn’t do that. In His wisdom He responded to the fall into sin with His decree that man should live many years outside Paradise, should live many years in a broken, fallen, crooked, perverted world. That is God’s ordinance. Then man can try to rise above the brokenness and crookedness of life in this fallen world, but man shall not be able for God has ordained that fallen man should live in a crooked, broken world.

This principle is true, brothers and sisters, not only for people in general but also for God’s own people specifically. The Lord redeemed a people for Himself from the land of Egypt, brought them to Mt Sinai, and established with them His covenant of grace. At the mountain the Lord told Israel that they would be to Him "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex 19:6); how rich! But the Lord did not perfect His people! And when He brought them into the Promised Land, that Promised Land was not a Paradise Restored but a land of continuing thorns and thistles.

We experience the same. The Savior has died on the cross, and we (says Paul) have died with Him. The Savior ascended into heaven, and then poured out His Holy Spirit, who renews God’s own, regenerates us. But we are not made perfect. Sin continues to have a place in our hearts and lives. "I can will what is right," says Paul, "but I cannot do it" (Rom 7). That is: the Lord God has ordained that we live in a broken, crooked world; He in wisdom has not yet brought us into Paradise Restored.

This, congregation, is Solomon’s point in our text. "Consider the work of God," he says, and describes God’s work with the word crooked, falsified, perverted. His point is not that God does evil things, commits sin; his point is not either that God’s work is of inferior quality. His point is that God in response to our fall into sin lets us live in this broken, sin-filled world, and let’s us experience in our lives the ongoing bitter effects of the fall. God is mighty to destroy us, God is mighty to restore us to Paradise, but He did neither; instead, He causes us to live in the brokenness between the Paradise of Genesis 2 and the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21. And in this broken world God puts broken, crooked circumstances on our path.

That last statement –God puts broken, crooked circumstances on our path- may sound too strong to our ears. But that’s precisely what Solomon says in vs 14. "In the day of prosperity be joyful, But in the day of adversity consider: surely God has appointed (literally: made) the one as well as the other." Both, the good and the evil, are His doing, says Solomon. He continues in vs 15 to give a concrete example. "There is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, And there is a wicked man who prolongs life in his wickedness." It’s a reality we see also. A good, godly man who can never get ahead, even dies young. And yonder an evil man who bullies his way to wealth and lives to ripe old age…. It’s unjust, it’s crooked, it isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. But Solomon would have the Israelites of his day (and we today) know that this is how God has ordained things to go in our fallen world; "God has made the one as well as the other" (cf Ps 73). It’s the confession of the church in Lord’s Day 10: "rain and drought, fruitful and barren years…, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed all things, come not by chance but by His fatherly hand." Notice: the Catechism mentions as coming from God’s hand not just the good things of life (rain, fruitful years, health and riches), but also the evil things of life (drought, barren years, sickness, poverty). Prosperity and adversity: "God has made the one as well as the other."

God has made things crooked. Does Solomon with that statement, then, somehow minimize human responsibility? Is he somehow saying that we can pass responsibility to God for the brokenness we cause in another’s life? Absolutely not, congregation! Solomon has written far more than the words of this text, and from the rest of his writing it is so obvious that Solomon is keenly aware of the responsibility each individual has for everything he does. Think of the book of Proverbs, and the instruction upon instruction from Solomon’s mouth to the youth of his kingdom to do this and not to do that, and to take responsibility for their own actions – and if they fail to obey they will cop the consequences. Within the book of Ecclesiastes too Solomon doesn’t hesitate to stress individual responsibility for one’s actions and the need to take ownership of the consequences of what one does. Consider only the closing words of the book: "Fear God, and keep His commandments…. For God will bring every work into judgment…, whether good or evil" (12:13f). No, congregation, Solomon knows very well the norm of God, that God has created people with the ability to obey Him in all things, and that God maintains that command also after the fall into sin. Solomon knows from God’s Old Testament revelation the truth of what Jesus said so pointedly: "You shall be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Mt 5:48).

But the book of Ecclesiastes has a specific purpose, and with the words of our text we come very close to the heart of that purpose, and that’s this: how does one live in a fallen world? Everything the eye sees is vanity, makes no sense, has no purpose; there’s so much brokenness, so much injustice, so much wrong and warped and twisted…. How do you survive in that brokenness?! Then Solomon’s answer is: recognize how come there is brokenness. Where does crookedness, where does perversion come from? Says Solomon: consider the work of God, that He has made all things crooked. Observe that God after our fall into sin could have destroyed the world, or could have restored Paradise forthwith, but He did neither; He instead ordained for us –it’s penalty upon our sin- an existence outside Paradise, an existence characterized by enmity, strife, pain, tears, thistles, brokenness, crookedness. That’s Solomon’s instruction: to survive outside Paradise you need to take seriously the source of this crookedness, need to take seriously the fact that the crookedness of this life is God’s work, is God’s response to our disobedience, is God’s judgment on our sin. In the brokenness and crookedness and perversions of this life we meet God on our path, God’s work, God’s judgments.

I come to our second point:

Why, brothers and sisters, does God allow this crookedness and brokenness as He described in Gen 3 to characterize life? Why did the Lord not in mercy restore Adam and Eve to Paradise?

I do not have time this morning to answer every aspect of that question. Suffice it to say that the enmity God decreed in Gen 3:15 was intended to obtain our salvation. God had said in the beginning that if Adam should eat of the forbidden tree, he would die. Death in the ultimate sense of the word is exclusion from the presence of the God of life; death is hell, suffering. When God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden and into that world of thorns and thistles, of crookedness and brokenness, they tasted something of that death, that distance from God, the justice of God.

But, congregation, precisely in that out-of-Paradise context, the Lord God ordained also the way of redemption! Yes, we have to put up with the brokenness of this life, we can’t make straight what God has made crooked, we can’t return on own strength to the Paradise of Gen 2 or bring about the New Jerusalem of Rev 21. But God uses this in-between situation for the specific purpose of straightening out what we broke in the fall into sin. "Who can make straight," asks Solomon, "what [God] has made crooked," and the answer is evident: we can’t. But God Himself can! It is the message of the temple Solomon built in Jerusalem, the message of the sacrifices daily offered in that temple. Those sacrifices spoke of sin, more, they spoke of the redemption that God would work through the death of His only Son. The temple knew of washings, rituals the people had to undergo to be cleansed of this uncleanness or that – an uncleanness picked up perhaps through their own wrongdoing or more often through the brokenness and crookedness of life; be it a period or a nocturnal emission, be it a white spot on one’s skin or in one’s clothing, etc. In the midst of that brokenness the people could come to God, and be assured that He was busy working a redemption that would take away the horrid results of the fall into sin, a redemption that would restore the happiness and perfection of Paradise. That was the promise of the temple: one day there would be no crying anymore, no more pain, no more grief, for the former things would be no more. Crookedness would go!

Here, congregation, is the ultimate significance of what Solomon says in vs 8 of our chapter. "The end of a thing is better than its beginning; The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit." In a world of crookedness, one must realize that God has His own plan and purpose with it all, and He will lead things into Paradise Regained. That conclusion to today’s crookedness makes one patient; God will work all things out in the long run.

So too vs 9. "Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry," or, better translated: "vexed", "for anger rests in the bosom of fools." True, all the crookedness around us can easily fill one with vexation, angry cynicism. Solomon cautions against such vexation, for we can’t change the brokenness. A wise man will leave it to God; God will bring it to its conclusion in due time.

Again, vs 10: "Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’" God is busy moving history forward from the first Paradise to the second. A century ago He permitted brokenness on the earth, last year He permitted brokenness, and next year He will again – and was the crookedness He permitted twenty years ago less painful than today’s crookedness? The wise man, says Solomon, doesn’t stare himself blind at people’s evaluation of customs and circumstances; the wise man recognizes that God is at work. And He is busy bringing about Paradise Restored, advancing in Solomon’s day to the first coming of Jesus Christ, and advancing today to Christ’s second coming. Was last year better than this year, thirty years ago better than today? "You do not inquire wisely concerning this." God is at work restoring Paradise, and that’s enough!

I come to our last point:

So people cannot make straight what God has made crooked. God has ordained thorns and thistles for our lives on this side of the fall into sin, has ordained enmity in life, strife, tension and hatred, and we can’t change that. He is busy bringing about Paradise Restored at His time and in His manner, and we can’t change that either. What, then, must we do with the crookedness of this life?

All we can do, brothers and sisters, is accept the brokenness and imperfections and crookedness of this life, and we all realize the truth of that. Consider the family. No realistic parent will insist that his child be perfect, sit just right, always say Please and Thank you, never tear his trousers. Certainly, a good parent will teach the norms of God’s word, and in that sense will hold his child to a high standard. But in the reality of daily living in this broken world, every parent knows that he has to ignore certain departures on his child’s part from the norms we want him to achieve. If the parent is going to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ in the child’s behavior, that child will have no life; his spirit will be crushed in no time. We all understand that. Brokenness is part of this life, and we can’t change that. Crookedness is part of the child’s makeup as a result of the fall into sin, and we can’t straighten that out. That’s a good dose of realism in the fallen world in which God makes us live.

That is why Solomon gives the instruction of vs 16: "Do not be overly righteous, nor be overly wise." If you as a parent lay down the law so firmly on your child that he be perfect –for isn’t that God’s will for us?!- then you do more damage than good in your family. Be righteous, by all means, and hold the norm of God clearly before your child. But take seriously the fact that God has us live between the Paradise of the beginning and the Paradise of the end, and He has determined that this in-between period should be characterized by brokenness, crookedness. You may not be wiser than God, you may not resist that your family life will know its crookedness, you may not pretend that you still live in the Paradise of the beginning or already live in the Paradise of the end. God has ordained we live in this life, with all its crookedness, and you can’t straighten that out. So: "do not be overly righteous," lest you destroy yourself (and your family).

What’s the alternative? One could respond to the reality of God’s decree in Genesis 3 and conclude that life is broken anyway and so just let things go; we can’t straighten out what God made crooked…. No, says Solomon in vs 17, don’t swing to that extreme either. "Do not be overly wicked, nor be foolish: why should you die before your time?" It’s true: life is broken. But the same God who ordained that fallen man must live now in this broken world has given us responsibility, and has also given His law as a guide for how to live. His law is a standard we need to seek to reach, and no amount of brokenness will excuse us from the need to obey that law. We all know that too, and that is why good parents keep holding God’s will before their children.

What we have then? Let no parent be overly strict with his children, dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’ whenever Johnny places a toe over the line. Equally, let no parent be lax with his children, letting everything go.

What then? Walk a road between these two extremes? Says Solomon in vs 18: "it is good that you grasp this, and also not remove your hand from the other." In other words, hold on to both vss 16 and 17; be neither overly righteous nor overly wicked. And how do you avoid both extremes? "He who fears God will escape them all." That’s the answer to the two extremes: fear God. That is: respect what God has ordained. Do not resist the ordinance of Genesis 3, neither in terms of the brokenness God has ordained for life, nor in terms of the promise of restoration God has announced. Respect what God has ordained, and then you can accept the fact that your children will not be perfect even while you continue to hold God’s norm before them. Such an approach, says Solomon in vs 19 –and he was the wisest of men!- makes you a wise parent, more effective than 10 parents in one family who have fallen for one or the other of the extremes. 10 foolish parents –overly righteous or overly wicked- will destroy, while one wise parent –he fears God and so accepts that he cannot make straight what God has made crooked- can go miles.

Then Solomon says something that cuts to the quick for all with a modicum of humility. Should a parent be overly righteous? Remember, says Solomon, that "there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin." Think, he says in vs 21f: have you ever spoken evil, thought evil of another? Of course you have. But that’s contrary to God’s norm! Well, if you recognize that you cannot achieve God’s standards, why insist that your children do? Be realistic! As you are a sinner, so your child is a sinner. That’s how God has ordained things in this fallen world, and as you accept that reality with respect to yourself so you must accept it with respect to your offspring also.

We all recognize, brothers and sisters, the truth and the wisdom of what Solomon is saying here. It’s a wisdom not restricted to family life, but to every aspect of life: family, school, church, business, government, etc, etc. Christians shoot for the norms of God in all of life, strive to be perfect as the Father is perfect, and encourage each other to reach for that goal. But Christians taught in the school of the Holy Spirit do not insist on Mission Impossible, do not despair when they see brokenness in themselves, do not make a big thing of brokenness in each other. Christians taught in the school of the Holy Spirit are realistic, feet-on-the-ground sort of people, who accept the ordinance of God about living between the Paradise of the beginning and the Paradise of the end. And they trust that God will make straight what is broken today – for He will complete the work Christ accomplished on the cross. Amen.