"The Divine Aristocracy"
An examination of Ecclesiastes 9 & 10 and how it applies to the contemporary church..
Download or email this sermon Who Will Escape?
Now we begin to get into the aristocracy: Verses 13-18:
"This wisdom I have also seen under the sun, and it seemed great to me: There was a little city with few men in it; and a great king came against it and besieged it, and built great snares around it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that same poor man. Then I said: 'Wisdom is better than strength. Nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. Words of the wise, spoken quietly, should be heard rather than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war; but one sinner destroys much good."
Let us understand this imagery of a city: We see the same imagery of a surrounded city in the fall of Samaria, in the fall of Jerusalem in 585 B.C., and again in the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Jerusalem, of course, is a picture of Heaven in the book of Revelation. In both Hebrews and Revelation we see that earthly Jerusalem is a shadow of the heavenly Jerusalem; in fact, the writer of Hebrews calls it a copy. (Heb. 12:22) The city is under siege: those who knew the way out of the siege, like Elisha during the famine and siege of his time, or Jeremiah in his time, were despised. In 70 A.D. it was the same after the martyrdom of James for the leader or senior pastor of the church in Jerusalem, a cousin of Jesus named Simeon. He was there when the Roman siege of Jerusalem that had been prophesied by Daniel and again by Jesus began. We can read about this in Eusebius and Josephus. God's people escaped from Jerusalem, both in Jeremiah's day and in 70 A.D. because they had wisdom. However, those who had wisdom were not the ones held in high esteem. Jeremiah and Simeon were looked down upon. The ones who knew how to escape were despised. In the Last Days it is the same. Remember the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 – the events of 70 A.D. prefigure the Rapture of the church. The way the believers came out of Jerusalem and were rescued is a type of the Rapture happening before the tribulation really gets bad.
Gold, silver, and jewels will not help you escape; only wisdom, knowledge and understanding will. Jesus said, “When you see Jerusalem surrounded. . .” (Lk. 21:20) and those with wisdom knew how to interpret the signs. Eschatologically, all of this comes into play: the people who understand that wisdom is better than what the world calls strength are despised, and their wisdom is not heeded, just as the people didn't listen to Jeremiah or to the believers in 70 A.D.
Verse 17 again:
"The words of the wise heard in quietness are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools."
You are better off in a home Bible study with six people where Jesus is lifted up and Scripture is truly expounded than in a huge, massive church where people are rolling on the floor in hysterics, shouting, and going ape over the latest nonsense or hype. There is no wisdom in it. “The words of the wise heard in quietness are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools”. The word “fools” here is not “raca”, not a belittlement of a person's natural lack of intelligence or a mockery of someone's congenital birth defect; rather, it speaks of people who are willfully fools, who pervert their logic. Jesus told us that if we call someone a fool due to a natural lack of intelligence we are in danger of hellfire – we are never to berate people because they are not intelligent naturally. However, when those who do know better behave foolishly, the Scripture berates them in places such as Jeremiah and Ecclesiastes.
When you see churches today taking part in the errors of hyper-Pentecostalism, with the shouting and hysteria and general foolishness that goes on, that is what Scripture calls “the shouting of a ruler among fools”. You are far better off in a tiny church where there is wisdom and where the Word of God is accurately taught and explained, where someone will tell you how to escape this besieged city before it is too late.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.