It' What's On The Inside That Counts

It's interesting to listen to interviews of people who have reached very old age like that. Some people will claim various things that contributed to their long life. Some will say they never touched a drop of alcohol for others. That was not the case at all. Some will say I was very fisticidious and careful about my diet and others. It just didn't matter what they ate. Some of you will remember our very own Julius hand who lived to be 104 years old. Mr. Hand would always say I drank a doctor pepper every day and that's what kept me alive for so long. It's interesting to hear people's stories about what contributed to their older age. But when you hear the different stories, it seems easy to conclude that really doesn't matter how you live because some people did this, some people didn't, some people did that, other people didn't care about that. So it's very easy to think, doesn't really matter how you live. If you're going to live to be old, you'll live to be old, doesn't matter. It's also very easy to conclude that about life, that it doesn't really matter how you live. Doesn't really matter whether you live a godly life, righteous life, or a wicked life. Solomon introduces that idea to us in Ecclesiastes chapter 7. We are in the seventh chapter of Ecclesiastes today and we get in verse 15, where Solomon raises that possibility, an observation he has made in his journey through life. Notice what he says in Ecclesiastes 7 verse 15, in this meaningless life I have seen both of these, in this meaningless life of mine. And remember, this meaningless life of mine has to be interpreted in the context of the whole book, a life which without purpose and without god in it really has no direction, no purpose, no meaning, no fulfillment. And on an earthly plane, that's all there is. Solomon is saying in this life of mine, which is so short, so like a vapor, so in some sense, empty, I've seen both of these, the righteous perishing in their righteousness and the wicked living long in their wickedness. It's the age old problem of why do the righteous suffer and why do the wicked prosper? Why sometimes do the righteous die young and the wicked seem to live long in prosperity? It's easy just to look at that evidence and conclude that it doesn't really matter what's on the inside, that it doesn't really matter about your character, doesn't really matter about the condition of your heart or your relationship with god. It's easy to make that conclusion. It's easy to think that somehow it appears in the providence of god that you are treated irrespective of your character. So it doesn't really matter how you live. Sometimes life makes us wonder if god really is concerned about what's on the inside. If god really is concerned at all about character, doesn't matter whether I live right or not, doesn't matter whether my life is aimed toward pleasing him or whether it doesn't, doesn't really matter. Now if you know your Bible very well at all, you know that's a very difficult question. It's a question that people grapple with throughout the Bible, but to jump quickly to that conclusion that it doesn't matter how you live, it doesn't matter about your relationship with god, would obviously be a premature conclusion. The psalmist grappled with this very issue in psalm 73, and you may be familiar with that passage. In psalm 73, the psalmist goes through the whole psalm basically saying, I don't understand god, why do I look at the wicked and they're prospering doing well, their children are well, they're healthy, they're they're raking in lots of money, they're doing great, and I'm struggling. I'm suffering, I'm having trouble making ends meet. That doesn't add up to me god. I don't understand that. And then toward the end of that chapter, the psalmist says, then I went to the place of worship, the house of god, and I considered their end. And so what psalmist said, once I considered their end, once I recognized that this is not all there is, you can't interpret just by the evidence that we see on this earth whether or not it is right to live for god or not, because that's not the end of things. That's not the final judgment of all things. And the psalmist said when I considered the end of all things, I saw, I saw that it was much better to know god and live for him than to live a wicked life. Does god really care about what's on the inside? We know he does. Look at look at this verse on the screen, verse 16, verse 17, when Israel is looking for a king to replace Saul when god is telling Samuel to look for him, is it there Barry? Is it freezing up? Now, first Samuel 16, seven says basically, don't look at his appearance as Samuel is looking at the different sons of Jesse. Don't look on his outward appearance because man looks on the outward appearance but god looks on what? The heart. God looks on the heart. Now, do you wonder what god looks for when he looks at the heart? Do you wonder what he's looking for, what he's expecting to find, what he's wanting to see there? What Solomon does in the rest of this chapter is he tells us basically, at least some of the things, god is looking for. God is looking for character on the inside. It is on what's on the inside that counts. It is what god wants to see in the heart that counts. And Solomon describes in the rest of this chapter six things that god is looking for in your heart and mind. Six character qualities that god is looking for in your heart and in mind. Now, there are plenty of others, no doubt. I've made a list of character qualities that challenge my life and speak into my life from the Beatitudes, the fruit of the Spirit, and the qualities listed for spiritual leadership and personality. Chapter three and there are 42 of those character qualities. So we're only going to talk about six this morning. You're thanking the Lord. This is not a 42 point message this morning. We're only going to look at six. There are lots of others that we could look at, but this is enough to work on today and this week. It is for me, for sure. So these six things, Solomon says in describing what it means to have character on the inside. God's looking for when he looks at the heart. First thing Solomon says he's looking for is balance. This may strike you as a strange one and these verses when we read them will strike you as even more strange, but God is looking for balance. Look at verse 16. Do not be over righteous. Do not be overwise. Why destroy yourself? Do not be over wicked. Do not be a fool. Why die before your time? It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes. Now I would suggest that these are maybe the most difficult verses in the book of Proverbs, in the book of Ecclesiastes, and some of the most naughty verses in all of the Bible. I will tell you that interpreters and commentators grapple over these verses spilling lots of ink on what they mean or don't mean. And it does sound like at first glance at what Solomon is saying is come on now. Don't be too holy. Don't be too wicked. Take a little bit each, you know, be a little righteous, but don't get too bent out of shape about that and have a little bit of wickedness too. You can have any fun in life. If you don't do that, it sounds like that's what he's saying. For crying out loud could that possibly be what Solomon is saying, what God is saying to us. Don't go overboard with either righteousness or wickedness, just kind of balance your life out a little bit. Well, because these verses are so naughty in their interpretation, it does form one of the most difficult interpretive challenges in the book. I'm going to do a little bit of kind of Bible study that we don't typically do on a Sunday morning. By the way, if you study the words in the New Testament, particularly in the pastoral epistles that Paul uses, there are at least three different kinds of presentation of the word. What we do on Sunday morning is what the Scriptures teach is preaching or exhorting. It is a sermon. It is not a lesson or a Bible study. It's a sermon. It's totally different from a Bible study. And there are different words that Paul uses for those different kinds of presentations of the word. There are at least three different kinds of presentation. So I'm going to dip out of preaching just a little bit this morning. And because I want you to understand the interpretation that I'm using of these verses, I don't just pull out a thin air. We're going to do a little bit of background, okay? And there's a little bit of work on what this is actually saying, and what it's not saying. Most who write on this passage agree that the issue here, the basic issue is keeping a balance because that's the way Solomon ends in verse 18, whoever fears God will avoid all extremes. So he's talking about keeping a balance in your life. What writers and commentators differ on is what kind of balance does he talking about? Now, most would agree, at least most who uphold the authority of Scripture and who believe in the integrity of Scripture, as we do here at Johnson Chapel, most would agree that Solomon is not saying, don't be too holy, don't be too wicked. Have a little bit of righteousness, but allow yourself a little bit of sin too. Don't go too far with this righteousness stuff. Now, Solomon is not saying that. Because at the end of verse 18 in his conclusion, he commends the fear of God. And throughout the book he commends the fear of God. The fear of God is inconsistent with any toleration of wickedness in our lives. So Solomon cannot be saying, little bit of righteousness, little bit of sin, that's the way to live. He's not saying that. There are others who say, well, you know, the word righteous can be used sometimes in the Old Testament of being just in a legal case. And so they interpret it that way. And they say, this is really referring to being right or just in a legal case. In other words, what Solomon is saying is, don't push the rightness of your cause in an obsessive way. But then on the other hand, don't just roll over and suffer wrong all the time either. Try to keep a balance between those two. But to me, that seems to be contrived and forced on the text. I don't think that does justice to what the text is actually saying. There are others who say, and there's some very good arguments for this view. There are others who say that what Solomon is saying is, don't depend too much on righteousness or wisdom to guarantee God's outward blessing. Now there's a bit of truth to that, by the way. I don't think this is what Solomon is saying here, but there's a bit of truth to what I'm going to say next. There are some who say, don't depend too much on righteousness or wisdom to guarantee God's outward blessing because life doesn't always work out that way. God sometimes does sin suffering even to the righteous. It doesn't always work out if you're going to have all the blessing in the world just because you live a righteous life. If you believe that, you will be disappointed and they interpret, destroy yourself to mean disappointed and the Hebrew word can mean that in other places in the Old Testament. So they say, don't put too many eggs in that basket and think God's always obligated to bless you outwardly because you're righteous or you're wise. But in your disappointment, this interpretation would say, don't swing over to indulgence in sin either. But to me, that way of looking at these verses does not seem to take seriously and in the plainest sense, the expressions be overrighteous, be overwise and be over wicked. It just doesn't seem to do justice to those phrases. The view that that has appealed to me is being the most consistent with this text is this. That when Solomon says, do not be overrighteous, he's not talking about real righteousness. He's talking about a fake righteousness. He's talking about a fairsacal external kind of righteousness. Think about this. Can you have too much of the right kind of righteousness? Can you be overrighteous in the right sense of the word righteousness? Of course not. None of us can be too holy or too righteous. So if Solomon is saying, don't be overrighteous, he must be speaking about a false fake external kind of righteousness. Second reason why I would see that is because he says, whatever kind of righteousness this is, it can ruin you. It can destroy you. Obviously, godly righteousness cannot destroy you. It will build up your life. But this kind of righteousness that he's talking about, the end of verse 16, can destroy you. And the third reason why I would see this is because of the verb be overwise. Now here's the real Bible study part for you. This is in a particular Hebrew stem, which is what Hebrews call their different tenses, like tenses of a verb. This is in a particular Hebrew stem called the hithpial, which basically is a reflexive verb. It literally means to think yourself wise, not to be too wise, but to think yourself overwise. And since that is parallel with righteous, the same idea is also communicated with righteousness. Don't think yourself over righteous. Don't think yourself overwise. He is obviously, I believe, talking about a fake external kind of righteousness. That's what he's warning against. Letting righteousness go to that extreme. It's the kind of righteousness that the Pharisees had, the kind of righteousness that emphasizes empty traditions, that is overpious and out of touch with reality, that uses a lot of super spiritual looks and phrases to communicate to people how righteous you really are. And wants to impress people. It's very showy in worship. It's very showy in how it presents itself. It is an external kind of of righteousness with a desire to impress people. It's very conceited. It looks down on anyone or anything that may be different from your standards of righteousness and your external traditions. It's that kind of righteousness that Solomon's talking about. And it is possible for a person who is even seeking righteousness because of our sinful nature to dip over into that kind of fake, external, ferreceical kind of self-righteousness. I was looking at an article in Christianity today from a man by the name of Forrest or Church. And he wrote something about this that said this. He said, any virtue can become a vice. Now think about this. Any virtue corrupted and twisted by our sin nature can become a vice. And he gives a few examples. He says, prudence can become stinginess. Honesty can become cruelty. Self-respect can become vain glory. Knowledge can become condescension. You know what we're talking about here. He goes on to say, justice can become heartlessness. It is possible for any virtue to turn into a vice and become just a mirror image of the real thing because of the corruption of our own sinful nature and pride. And I think that's what Solomon's warning against. He's not warning about too much of the good kind of righteousness. You can't have too much of that. He's talking about don't let your righteousness become self-righteous. Proud, ferreceical, hypocritical kind of external righteousness that is proud and conceited of who you are and what you have attained. Don't do that. Don't go to that extreme. On the other hand, the balance in verse 17 is don't be overwicked and do not be a fool why die before your time. I think what he's talking about here is the balance is this. Don't swing all the way from that legalism to what the tendency is all the way over to license. And that's what the tendency is for many people who want to get away from legalism. They swing all the way to the other extreme and that is license. Just indulging in wickedness, indulging in sin or for believers who are wanting to maybe maintain that outward exterior of righteousness, allowing a good degree of sin at least to the point where you think people can't see it. Sins of heart, sins of the mind. So what Solomon is saying, don't swing over to license to wickedness. Understand, and here's the balance. Understand, you've got to send nature. It is present. You will not be perfect. You will sin but don't give yourself the freedom to sin. Don't become overwicked. Don't give yourself the license and the freedom to say, well, it doesn't really matter. I'm just going to do whatever I want. Now Solomon is saying, keep those two intentions. Don't swing to either extreme and he summarizes the balance in verse 18. It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes. When it comes to this issue of righteousness and sin, we avoid extremes. What are the extremes of fairsacal hypocritical outward external righteousness and the other extreme is swinging the other side the other way to license and just giving freedom to your sin nature. What he's saying is, okay, you recognize you've got a sin nature. You will not be perfect. Don't expect that. But also don't give yourself freedom and license to sin. Seek genuine righteousness. But don't let that dip over into the proud external fairsacal kind of righteousness. Keep that balance. Keep the tension between those two extremes. Be genuine. Be genuine. Be real. Work hard at overcoming the pull of your sinful nature, recognizing all the time. You will not be 100% perfect. But also make sure you genuinely from your heart pursue God, not in a fairsacal way, self-righteous way, but in a genuine pursuit of holiness. That's the proper balance in the Christian life. And I believe that's what Solomon's getting at. So what does God look at when he looks at our hearts? He wants to see a genuine righteousness that is fighting for all its worth against sin is not allowing sin, recognizing that we will not be perfect, that we will fall picking up and moving on when we do, but recognizing that we are pursuing holiness. That balance is what he's looking for. God is looking for balance. That kind of balance in the heart. Second thing I believe that God is looking for is wisdom. Wisdom. When God looks for character in the heart, he's looking for wisdom. Verse 19. Wisdom makes one wise person more powerful than 10 rulers in a city. Now wisdom is the ability to see life from God's perspective and to live it by His principles. That's what wisdom is. Wisdom is the correct use of knowledge. It is seeing life from God's perspective, understanding how He wants us to live life and then applying His principles to living life the way He wants us to live. That's wisdom. And what Solomon is saying is wisdom is a tremendous ally to you. It is a tremendous benefit to your life. In fact, it will give you more strength than the help of 10 influential city leaders. You want to line up people on your side and you look for 10 influential city leaders. That's what he's talking about there in verse 19, 10 rulers in a city. 10 most influential people in your town to line up behind your side. He said you'd have a better ally if you have wisdom. Wisdom is better than that. It's more powerful than that. It's stronger than that. Why do we need wisdom? Why do we need to be able to see God's perspective on life and live out His principles in life? Because there are lots of questions and tensions in life that require wisdom to navigate. There are lots of difficult questions, lots of tensions between issues that we're not sure what decision to make that requires applying His principles and living them out. It requires wisdom to live with sometimes some tension between opposing views or difficult decisions. And one of those areas of tension is described for us in verse 20. He says indeed, indeed tying it to verse 19, so the same idea of why you need wisdom. Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins. He's just commended the pursuit of honest righteousness, of genuine righteousness, and of not tolerating sin in our lives. He's just commended that. And now he says one of the tensions you're going to have to live with, it's going to require wisdom in how you deal with yourself and with others is you've got to recognize in spite of your pursuit of holiness and your desire to move away from sin. There's nobody on earth who's perfect. There is nobody on earth who is righteous in the complete sense of that word who does what is right and never sins. Now you're going to have to live with that tension. I'm going to have to live with that tension the rest of my life. That my goal is to pursue righteousness and avoid wickedness all the time realizing I will never be perfect. I'm going to fall at times. I'm going to sin at times. And that's a tension that you live with. What what that requires even those who are righteous and really seeking to live a righteous life sometimes will fall. What that requires is that you must have wisdom in dealing with other people and in dealing with yourself. You have to have wisdom to give grace to show mercy to realize that you are not above anything that anybody else might do or fall into. Seeing life from God's perspective, understanding those bigger issues will cause you at times to show wisdom in the sense of grace and mercy to people who have fallen. Now if you're a perfectionist that's hard to do. That's awful hard for you to take. If you're a perfectionist, everything is black and white. You want all the questions answered. You want everybody to toe the line just like you did. Yeah, just like you did. Someone has said a perfectionist is someone who takes great pains and gives them to others. What Solomon is saying is sometimes life requires wisdom to navigate these difficult tensions. I want to be holy, but I'm not all the time. So how do I deal with myself in that? Do I condemn myself? Do I condemn others? Do I give up on others? As hard as we may seek to live a holy life, we all still have a sin nature and we will do wrong. We will think, say and do things that are wrong sometimes. Do we give up on others? Do we give up on ourselves? No. Wisdom says, wisdom says that we understand there is no one on earth who is righteous who does what is right and never sins. There is no one who's perfect. Don't expect that and don't be judgmental and condemning when either you or someone else doesn't measure up to the standard you think they ought to. He's talking about showing some grace and mercy here. That is wisdom and that's a stronger ally, a more powerful ally than lining up 10 influential people in your town behind you. Wisdom, what's God looking for? When he looks at our hearts, God looks on the heart, not the outward appearance. What's he looking for? He's looking for balance. He's looking for wisdom. But he's also looking for restraint and that's the word I want to use for these next two verses. I think it's a good one to describe them. Let's see if you agree. Verse 21, do not pay attention to every word people say or you may hear your servant cursing you for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others. This is a very fascinating couple of verses but very wise insights into life. What Solomon is saying is learn not to take everything you hear seriously. Learn not to take everything you hear to heart. That's true with praise isn't it? We need to be careful how we accept praise. If we begin to believe everything everybody says nice about us, we'll become inflated with pride. But Solomon's not talking about that side of it. He's talking about the negative side of it. He's talking about harmful criticism that is designed to cut you down. That is designed to really hurt. That is designed to put you in your place. And that might come in obvious ways from a servant who doesn't like what the master is told him to do or has stipulated should be done in the household or whatever it might be. Solomon is saying if you take seriously and take to heart everything everybody says about you. Don't do that. Don't pay attention. In other words don't take it to heart. Don't take it too seriously. Don't get too troubled and unsettled about it. In other words don't be so sensitive. Don't be so sensitive because if you take to your heart everything everybody says about you. Now by the way I want to be careful to say there is wisdom in constructive criticism. And in whatever criticism we receive we need to evaluate it to see if there's truth there that about me that I need to take to heart. All of us including myself have received that kind of criticism and it's been helpful. But what Solomon's talking about is a servant who is cursing you. A servant who is just mad and who is letting you have it and he doesn't know you're overhearing it. He's telling somebody else this but he's letting it may be you're not even there. Maybe you're presence and you hear about it later or it's reported to you but you aren't there. You're this person is is giving you down the road throwing you under the bus and you're not there to defend yourself. What Solomon is saying is be careful how you let that get into your soul. Be careful that you don't pay attention to every word. In other words don't be so sensitive about it. If you are it will intimidate you. It will keep you on the defensive. It will damage your ability to perform to do what you know you need to do. I've been there. I know that. I know that. You know I was in a class one time where we were required by the professor to write self-evaluation and to list our greatest strengths and weaknesses. And I'm just going to be a little bit transparent with you. One of the ones I won't give you all of them especially the weaknesses you probably already know them. But one of the ones I put down one of my greatest strengths I felt as I honestly prayed and considered was the fact that God is by very nature of my personality giving me a sensitive heart. And it's helped me to be a good pastor through the years because I do hurt with people and I do feel what people are feeling. And I also wrote one of my greatest weaknesses is that I have a sensitive heart because I take things too personally. And when people are upset and when they say things that really digs at me and this passage speaks powerfully into my life. Remember, as Solomon says, don't take every word too seriously. Don't let it poison your heart. Check it this way he says in verse 22, you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others. You know, you know, John, if you're honest, you've done the same thing. And you know sometimes that comes out of exasperation or anger or frustration and you know six months later you regret that you said those things. You know that John, you've done that. And so give that space to other people too. Don't take so seriously every bit of cursing that comes against you, every bit of negative criticism that comes against you. You know what happens when we begin to fire back, we just create more damage, don't we? We just create more damage when we fire back at people. So Solomon saying just learn to take it and go and don't let it seep into your heart. Don't take it so personally. I don't know if you ever watched the discovery program Mythbusters. I haven't seen it a lot but I've seen a few of them. And they're really quite interesting. On one particular Mythbusters, sometimes those guys get in trouble by what they try to do. This was written up in a newspaper in California. They were staging an experiment in the town of Dublin, California where they were trying to fire a cannonball into a large water container at a bomb disposal range. And I can't remember what they were trying to prove but they were trying to see if a certain urban myth is really true or if it's not true at all. Well unfortunately, they misfired the cannonball and it missed, and this is the newspaper report, out as a read it, the cantaloupe-sized cannonball missed the water, tore through a cinder block wall, skipped off a hillside and flew some 700 yards east but it didn't stop there. It bounced in front of a home on a quiet street, ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs, blasted through a bedroom, then it exited the house leaving a perfectly round hole in the stucco, crossed a six-lane road, took out several tiles from the roof of a home on Bellevue Circle and finally slammed into a family's beige Toyota minivan in a driveway on Springdale Drive. Now that cannonball got out of hand, it got loose and it did all kinds of damage. And when I read that I thought, you know, when you start firing back at a servant who curses you, you're just going to create collateral damage. You're just going to create damage to a lot of people. And so what God is saying, practice restraint, practice restraint, don't take to heart all the cursing that's aimed at you. Back up and realized, you know, I've said things myself that I regretted later, said them in haste, said them in anger, said them in frustration. I've cursed others too. In the word curse here is not profanity. It means to speak ill of in a harmful way. I've done that, you've done that. And we all need to back up and realize, okay, let's just show restraint, let's not fire back, let's show restraint. That's a good character quality to learn. The fourth one, Solomon says, God is looking for quickly as humility, humility. Verse 23, all this I tested by wisdom and I said, I am determined to be wise, but this was beyond me. Whatever exists is far off and most profound, who can discover it? Now here's what Solomon is saying here. Solomon has just talked about how important wisdom is. Wisdom is a better ally than 10 influential leaders in the city, he says. It would give you a more strength than that. Now he gives a warning about wisdom. And the warning is this, no matter how much wisdom you attain, you will never figure everything out. No matter how much wisdom you attain in life and how much of God's perspective on life you learn and understand you will never gain all the wisdom there is to gain. And that's why he says, I was determined to be wise, but it was beyond me. There was always more. There was always, there were always things I couldn't figure out. I didn't understand. I struggled with and it seemed far off and it was so profound. I couldn't discover it. I couldn't get to the depth of it. And that's a warning about wisdom. You will never figure it all out. You will never gain all the wisdom you need. And it is best to be able to admit that. That's humility. And that's what Solomon is expressing here. I admit it. I can't figure it all out. I can't know it all. I can't learn it all. I can't get all wisdom. And I admit that. That's a sign of humility to be able to admit your limitations. That's humility. And by the way, this was not just some innocent little pursuit. This was a strong pursuit, verse 25, he says, so I turned my mind to understand, to investigate, to search out all of those or words that talk about really digging, really trying hard to search out wisdom and the scheme of things and understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly. I mean, this was a whole hearted pursuit. And even with that, he said there are some limitations. There are some things. I will never figure out. I will never know. The point is, you have to have humility to admit some things. There are some things you don't know. It requires humility to say there are some things. I don't understand. There are some things I do not have the answers for. If you have to be the kind of person who always has the answer, who is never willing to say, you know what? I just don't know. I don't have the answer for that. I don't understand that. If you're not willing to do that, you need to learn a lesson in humility. Because humility understands you will never gain all wisdom. You will never know everything there is to know about everything. And to be willing to express your limitations is a sign of humility. Fifthly, Solomon says, here's what God's looking for when he looks at your heart. Verse 26, purity. I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will in snare. What he's talking about here is a familiar expression and description that you find sometimes in proverbs as well. Solomon wrote that book also. It's the description of an adulterous woman. And what he's saying is her heart really is a trap, a snare. Her hands are like chains that will enslave you. The situation may look alluring, but you will find it as Solomon says, more bitter than death. Adultery, sexual sin may look alluring, but it is more bitter than death. The affair that we often call it is a myth. It is a myth. It is a myth that is promoted and created by the glamour of movies and television programs and romance novels. It's a myth. It doesn't work that way in real life. And that's what Solomon is warning us. And that's what he warns us of over and over again in the first nine chapters of proverbs. The affair, the alluring sexual attraction is a myth. It doesn't work that way in real life. It will ruin everything. It will ruin everyone. There will be untold suffering to you and everyone that your life touches. Solomon is reminding us of that and the need for purity. And I would remind you that purity begins in the heart. It begins in the heart. It begins with what you allow in your mind and your heart. That's where purity begins. Solomon says, the man who pleases God will escape her, but the center, she will ensnare purity. And then finally, Solomon commends honesty. When God looks into the heart, when God looks for character, what's he looking for? He's looking for honesty. He's looking for someone who will be honest enough to recognize sin and the lack of wisdom and admit it. Admit it. Look at verse 27. Look says the teacher. This is what I have discovered. Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things. In other words, through the careful investigative process, verse 28, here's his conclusion, while I was still searching, but not finding, I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. That's things a little bit, doesn't it? Solomon Chauvinistic is Solomon a woman hater? Come on. Solomon a woman hater? Is Solomon saying that men are so much more upright than women? Men before you get to smile too smuggly here, please do the math. You're only a tenth of a percent better. That's not much. And that's not really even what Solomon's getting yet. This is a familiar form of speaking in the Hebrew language. We call them in English and in other language idioms, not idiots, but idioms. It's just a manner of speaking. For instance, let me give you a few, just a few pages back from Proverbs. You'll remember these expressions. Proverbs 30, for instance. Under three things, the earth trembles. Under four, it cannot bear up. And then he lists those four things. Four things on earth are small, yet they're extremely wise. There are three things that are stately and they're stride four that move with stately bearing. That's a familiar way of expressing where he adds a number at the end for exaggeration purposes to make the case stronger. There are three things that are stately no for. It's not that he just thought of another one. That was just a way of speaking in the Hebrew language. And when he's talking about negative things, the way to do it is to subtract the number. So I found one among a thousand men didn't find any women. It's not that he's critical of women. That's just a familiar Hebrew way of saying basically, there's nobody. There's nobody. And he makes his point with that exaggeration. Nobody, it really goes along with verse 20. There's no one on earth who does what is right and never sins. And Solomon said, I look, I searched, I could not find anybody. I'm being honest. There's nobody including myself. Solomon says, but this is a conclusion he did come to in verse 29. This is an honest conclusion. This only have I found God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes. Oh, what an astute wise observation of humanity. God made man perfect in the garden, Adam and Eve. God made man and woman upright. But because of Adam sin and the resulting passing down of the sin nature to everybody who's been born since Adam, man or woman, all of us are born with a sinful nature. And because of that, we have a tendency to, as Solomon says, go in search of many schemes. It's an interesting way to say basically, our nature has been corrupted by sin. And now we cleverly calculate alternatives to living righteously. We cleverly calculate substitutions for God's way. We cleverly calculate schemes to be able to indulge in sin and hopefully get away with it. We make excuses for sin is what Solomon's saying. That's a part of our corrupted heart and mind and nature because of sin. And what Solomon is basically saying is, I've done all this investigation. I'm honest enough to tell you and we need to be honest enough to admit. I'm wrong. I sin. It's my fault. Are we honest enough to admit those kinds of things? Are we honest enough to tell the truth about ourselves? Are we honest? That's what Solomon is getting at. What does God look at? He looks at someone who realizes that although God made man in the beginning perfect upright, not a one of us have been upright since then. And so we need to admit it when we're wrong. We need to admit it when we've sinned. We need to be honest enough to say yes. I am wrong. I sinned. We need to admit that. It is what's on the inside that counts with God. God doesn't look on the external appearance as he said to Samuel in 1 Samuel 16. He does look on the heart. And when he looks on the heart, he's looking for things like balance, honest pursuit after righteousness, recognizing that you still have that pull of the sinful nature. You won't be perfect, but you're not going to give into that. That kind of balance. He's looking for that. He's looking for wisdom. He's looking for restraint, not to fire back at everybody who fires at you. He's looking for humility. He's looking for purity. And he's looking for honesty. God is very much concerned about character. The question all of us need to ask ourselves is this. Am I? Am I as concerned about what's on the inside as God is? Am I concerned about the state of my heart? Am I concerned about my character? Let's pray together. Father, thank you for this glimpse from your word into what you're looking for when you look at the heart. And although this is not an exhaustive list and many other things you describe in your word, certainly is enough for me to work on this week. Lord, make it our desire. All of us here this morning that when you look upon us, you see hearts that although not perfect are honestly sincerely striving to be more like you, to have pure hearts, righteous character. Help us not to give into sin. Help us not to entertain sin. Help us to walk close to you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.