Bible Verse Synopsis 6-24-25

Ecclesiastes 8:

The effect of God on the believer is inward and outward. Verse 1: “a man’s wisdom makes his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed.” Christ first works through our heart via the Spirit. Once he changes our heart, it affects our minds. He gives us wisdom. This wisdom allows peace to come over us. This peace removes the gloom and replaces it with a brightness only a true believer can possess. How bright does your light shine? Can others see the Spirit at work in your heart?

Verse 3 says: “Be not hasty to go out of His sight: stand not in an evil thing: for He does whatsoever pleases Him.” Keep your faith in the Lord and keep it strong. Stand not in evil, but stand in the power of the King. By standing in Him, we avoid the evils of this world. And maybe most impactful upon our lives, “a wise man’s heart discerns both time and judgment” - Verse 5. Instead of worrying about where the time is going, we should worry about how we spend that time. Is your time flying by, or is it useful to Him and also to you? The terror of fleeting time is no longer at the front of our mind. Rest easy in His comfort and His wisdom.

We do not have the power to know when Jesus shall return. Verse 7 says “For he knows not which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be?” The only one who knows and can tell us is the Lord. While Solomon speaks of wisdom in this book, He also foreshadows Jesus Christ and the second coming that we are all waiting for. Trust in the Lord to know when the time is right.

Wickedness, a way other than God’s, provides no light and no wisdom. It gives no power and the spirit abstains from giving His presence. Solomon understands this and gives us an important piece to fit into our logic in Verse 9: “All this have I seen, and applied my heart into every work that is done under the sun: there is a time wherein one man rule diver another to his own hurt.” Solomon has viewed every job we had at the time and applied himself to it, yet is left unfulfilled. Just as the man who serves or is ruled by another man without God’s wisdom is left empty. These empty promises of man pull us from the Holy places and cause us to forget our Lord. The wicked path pulls at us. How will you resist the temptation of other men? Will you rise with Christ away from the wickedness and submit to God’s wisdom? Are you prepared to be His?

Whether we be faithful and God-fearing or wicked and unruly, the Lord knows us. It matters not what we do for labor, what matters is that we look to our eternity. It is vanity, one of Solomon’s favorite phrases throughout this book, references has silly of us to care about these things. Care about our relationship with God. That is where our worries should lie. Is your relationship strong enough to overcome the vanity of this world?

We are called to find joy in our labors, not for the labor to overtake our lives. Verse 16 says: “When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the Earth: (for also there is that neither day nor night sees sleep with his eyes).” In Solomon’s quest he found more than we can imagine. Becoming a slave to your business does you little good. For the end of that will be a nothing. The Kingdom is calling. Are you listening for the call, or too engrossed in your labor?

Verse 17 “Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labor to seek it out, yet he shall not find it, yes farther, though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.” For man to understand everything about God is impossible. We may desire to know, but that desire is of the flesh. We are not meant to comprehend the entire knowledge of God. However, we can know many things. He has given us that capacity. Yet, the main point we must keep front and center is to know Him and give ourselves up to the Lord. Where are you in this never ending search for Earthly wisdom? Trusting in Him or trusting of the flesh?