Year 5, Day 340: Ecclesiastes 10

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

Once more we get to hear Solomon speak on the comparison between foolishness and folly.  Yesterday I spoke about the need for everyone to fall under the category of circumstance in their life.  That being said, it is still better to have the character of a wise man than that of a fool.  In fact, this makes the perfect extension from what I talked about yesterday.  After all, if both the good and the evil fall prey to circumstance, why choose good?  Why choose to restrain our sinful nature and deny our fleshly desires if in doing so we can still fall prey to circumstance?

The answer is character.  The fool will fall prey to circumstance as will the wise.  However, there are moments where we do pick our own fate.  There are moments where we reap what we sow rather than reap what the world gives us.  In those moments where we actually do get what we deserve it is better to live with character than without it.

The wise person can avoid certain pitfalls.  The wise person can even influence the people around them.  The wise person can earn the gratitude of the people around them.  The wise and the foolish will both eventually die, but the wise person may have more to say about the circumstances of that event than the fool.

In the end, this is a great general theory about life in general.  I cannot earn my way into salvation.  I can’t ever completely avoid death and the consequences of my sin.  I will eventually have a bad day when the world seems against me.  But what about all the days in between?  Am I going to live righteously or unrighteously?  Am I going to do the right things or am I going to live in my own selfishness?

The wages of sin are death.  I cannot save myself.  But in the rest of the moments of life, God’s ways lead to better results than my own selfish desire.

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