Imagine an outdoor wedding. A towering oak shades all who’ve gathered. The lighting is perfect. The sun begins to set. Bride and groom exchange vows and rings. Her ring is a size too big. But “No worries. The moment is too special.” Everyone is then off to the dance. They cross a field to celebrate under the pavilion.

Food, drinks, laughter. Next, it’s time for pictures. But that’s when the bride notices—her ring is missing. “The field!” she thinks. “It must’ve fallen off when he swooped me up and carried me across the field.” Now, a team of guests slowly paces the field, heads down, searching for the ring. The grass is thick. The sun has set. The ring is precious. Its worth demands a diligent search. But it’s hard to find when light is lacking.

In a similar way, wisdom is precious. Its worth demands a diligent search. But it’s hard to find when the world is so dark. Ecclesiastes hasn’t shied from facing the dark realities of our groaning world. Life under the sun is full of futility. But in today’s passage, the Preacher gets to the very bottom. Underlying all the futility is our sin, our lack of righteousness. “There’s not a righteous man on earth,” he says. So, our big idea goes like this: wisdom’s hard when righteousness is lacking under the sun. Verse 15…

¹⁵ In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. ¹⁶ Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? ¹⁷ Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? ¹⁸ It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them. ¹⁹ Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city. ²⁰ Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. ²¹ Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. ²² Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others. ²³ All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me. ²⁴ That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out? ²⁵ I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. ²⁶ And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. ²⁷ Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things— ²⁸ which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. ²⁹ See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.

The structure of our passage was harder to determine this week. But a few clues helped me organize today’s message. Verse 15 presents an example of something crooked in the world; and verses 16-18 teach us how to respond. So, I grouped those together. Also, verses 23-29 repeat words that illustrate a diligent search—words like “test,” “find,” “know,” “search,” “seek.” So, I also grouped those verses. Which leaves one more group, verses 19-22. With that said, I’ll take this passage in three parts; and at the end we’ll take a common thread across all three parts and tie it to the gospel.

Wisdom faces vanity but still fears God.

Let’s start with verses 15-18, wisdom faces vanity but still fears God. Verse 15 presents an example of something crooked in the world: “There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing.” Now, we also heard in verse 20, “there’s not a righteous man on earth.” Meaning, we must understand this man’s righteousness in a relative sense. Compared to the wicked, he seeks to do right before God and others.

But notice what happens to him: he perishes in his righteousness while the wicked man prolongs his life. If you think, “Well, that’s absurd!” then you’re on the right track. This ought not be! Yet it is the world we inhabit. I knew a young godly man in this church, zealous for Christ. His name was Daniel. At the age of 18 his life was taken in a car accident while driving to share the gospel downtown. Yet we also know people who’ve built careers on moral compromise and lived till their 90s. It ain’t right.

In many ways, it challenges the very things we read in Scripture—like Proverbs 10:27, “The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short.” Our experience says, “Not always!” Ecclesiastes recognizes this. It sympathizes with our frustrations. But it also teaches us how to respond—and how not to respond.

Notice what he says in verse 16: “Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?” What sort of advice is this? Is he saying that too much righteousness is bad? Certainly not. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” The Preacher isn’t diminishing that pursuit.

Rather, he’s correcting any notion of dependence on your own righteousness or wisdom, as if those things could produce the results you want. Some might see the righteous man perish, and because of texts like Proverbs 10:27, they might draw the wrong conclusion: “If the fear of the Lord prolongs life, and this righteous man perished, he must not have been righteous enough. I better step it up to guarantee that my life will last longer.” Life becomes an act of trying to force God’s hand based on righteousness you accrue—maybe even by adding to God’s commandments?[i]

The instruction? Don’t be overly righteous. Don’t think you can leverage God by doing more and accumulating more. Don’t live like being more righteous will guarantee an escape from the harsh realities of this crooked age. If that’s the way you live, you will destroy yourself. If you depend on your righteousness to get something from God, it’s going to go badly for you. You’re going to hit a wall of confusion when the righteous keep dying. You’re going to jeopardize your soul by thinking you can control God by what you’ve earned and what you think you deserve.

It’ll also go badly, if you shirk the pursuit of righteousness altogether. Verse 17, “Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?” Is he saying that a little loose living is okay, as long as you don’t go overboard? Not at all. This book ends on the whole duty of man to keep God’s commandments. Even a little sin is wrong and jeopardizes our relationship with God.

Instead, he’s dealing with the temptation many face when they see this world’s crookedness: “The righteous man perishes; the wicked live long. Why bother with righteousness anymore? Might as well live it up!” But if you go that route, the wisdom of Proverbs still stands. You’re only asking for premature death, not to mention the eternal destruction of your soul.

In both cases, he’s probing a question we all need to consider: why do you pursue righteousness at all? Is it to make yourself look better before others? Is it to gain some payoff in the present? Is it to leverage God to get something you want? Or is it because you fear God, you stand in awe of him, and you know his ways are good?

That’s where he heads in verse 18. Only one thing will keep you from the errors of verses 16 and 17—fearing God. “It is good that you should take hold of this [i.e., the warning of verse 16], and from that [i.e., the warning of verse 17] withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.”

When you fear God, you won’t for a second think that you can put him in your debt, that you can manipulate him by your own righteousness and your own accumulation of wisdom. Not only are you a creature, but you’re a sinful one at that. You will always be a debtor to God. Also, when you fear God, you won’t dabble with wickedness or give yourself over to folly. You will love his commandments.

Wisdom faces vanity but it still fears God. Wisdom’s hard when righteousness is lacking. But the fear of the Lord shines light into our darkness. The fear of the Lord shows us how to find that precious wisdom. This is how we make it in a world where the righteous die early and the wicked prosper—fearing God, honoring him in your heart as holy and just and wise, and walking in his ways because they are right and not simply because of some payoff in the immediate present.

Like when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego tell the king: “our God…is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you…that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image you have set up.” They face vanity but still fear God.

Wisdom gives strength but despairs of self.

Second, wisdom gives strength but despairs of self. Verse 19, “Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city.” Rulers represent political and military power. Ten signifies an unstoppable force. But against a man with wisdom, they’re in trouble. Consider this story from 9:14. “There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the poor man’s wisdom is despised and his words are not heard.”

Wisdom supplies someone with patience to consider a situation more fully. Wisdom gives someone skill to determine a better strategy for the fight. It helps someone remain diligent in their efforts and alert to potential dangers. Wisdom helps someone focus on the right things at the right time. It strengthens us in many ways.

But one thing wisdom will never do—it will never tell you that you’re good enough. It will never lead you to think too highly of your abilities. Verse 20, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” What a sweeping claim. He’s not denying that people do good things at times—verse 15 clearly implies that some act in righteousness. God’s common grace is also at work in the world.

But the point here is that all are still sinners. Everybody born under the sun is also born in Adam. We inherit his sin nature as well as his guilt. The proof that we inherit sin and guilt is that we all die. We are born sinful. Our natural inclinations hate God’s word. We don’t just do bad things; we are bad people.

The apostle Paul says the same thing in Romans 3. In fact, he quotes this verse. He’s making the case that Jews are no better off than Gentiles when it comes to their standing before God. He says, “For we have already charged that all [people]…are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’” What’s the evidence? “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.” And what’s at the root of it all? “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Outside of Christ, this is God’s assessment of all of us.

Some of you have no problem receiving this, because you know what God saved you from. Others might’ve grown up in a relatively moral home. Maybe you came to faith early in life and, by grace, you were protected from much of this world’s corruption. This is God’s assessment of you too. All are under sin.

Part of growing in wisdom is growing in your awareness of how ruined you are without the grace of God. Strength in wisdom includes honesty about your sinfulness. Look at the example he gives in verse 21: “Don’t take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you.” The picture seems to be a ruler-servant relationship. He’s far too concerned with what others think of him. He’s always listening in and suddenly hears somebody say something negative.

You ever heard someone talking negatively about you? Or perhaps gossip has traveled and eventually you learn what others really think of you; some of them are hurtful. Isn’t it tempting to respond with a judgmental spirit: “How dare they speak of me like that.” Perhaps we then grow bitter and angry and distant. But what counsel does he give in verse 22? “Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.”

He’s not denying the wrongs done to us. But he does change our perspective in light of the wrongs we’ve done to others. Has this ever happened to you? You’re criticizing someone else’s anger while you get angry. You’re correcting a child for stubbornness while you are stubborn. You’re upset that nobody reaches out while you don’t reach out either. Your heart knows—many times you’ve done the same.

The doctrine of human depravity makes no exceptions. We’re all guilty sinners. Nobody is righteous. Righteousness is lacking under the sun. There’s not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. Wisdom will make you strong. But part of that strength comes from you accounting for your own sinfulness.

Wisdom is precious but rare among sinners.

Third, wisdom is precious but rare among sinners. Notice his quest in verses 23-29. “All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, ‘I will be wise,’ but it was far from me. That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out?” Much like he did in 1:12-18, the Preacher again tests wisdom itself. He aims to be wise. But what does he find, except that he can’t figure it all out. “That which has been” (i.e., the past) is far off. He looks back on the history of man—and God’s dealings with man—and it’s too deep for him to come up with all the answers.

But that doesn’t mean his search turns up no answers. Look at verse 25, “I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her.”

At one level, this speaks to the dangers of sexual immorality. Our modern age says that “Sexual fulfillment is the essence of human happiness.” In his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman exposes how our modern age says that “To be satisfied is to be sexually fulfilled here and now. The happiest person is…the one who’s constantly indulging his or her sexual desires.”[ii] Our modern age, then, regards the moral principles of Scripture to be oppressive, and liberation comes with giving yourself fully to your sexual appetites. But notice: this passage warns that the opposite is the case. To give yourself to that kind of living is like a trap, a net that will drag you around. It’s like fetters/chains, and it’ll be hard to break free. You will not be happy; you will be more bitter than death if you start down this path of sexual sin.

But at another level, there’s more going on here than just sexual sin. Because “the woman whose heart is snares” refers to “the foolishness” of verse 25. He’s personifying foolishness, folly. And it’s not the only place in Scripture where this happens. Proverbs 1-9 also personify Wisdom and Folly as two women. Dame Folly is a prostitute, and her road leads to destruction. Lady Wisdom is a woman of valor, and her road leads to life. And Solomon is encouraging his son to marry Lady Wisdom—she’s the excellent wife of Proverbs 31. But be warned, Dame Folly will continue her propositions.

She is a hunter. Folly is trying to hunt you down and trap you. In Proverbs, she lures people away from the Lord’s covenant words. Sexual sin is but one of her strategies. She also uses money and smooth talk and popularity and a party-spirit and political alliances. In other words, she represents all the many charmers and false gods who seek to lead you away from the Lord. You can read about her in Revelation 17 as well—the Great Prostitute, Babylon the Great. Her abominations include idolatry, child-sacrifice, men pretending to be women and vice versa, using a false balance at work, lying to get by, killing Christians.[iii] She seduces kings, peoples, multitudes, nations, languages. She’s a hunter, and she’s good at it, especially in a world where righteousness is lacking.

How does one escape? By pleasing God. The word-picture in Hebrew is “doing what’s good before God’s face.” Your heart is full of good things when you live before the face of God, when you go about your day thinking about your God. He lifts his face upon you; you delight in him. That’s how you escape—knowing God. Set your mind on the good things of God; and you will discern the traps of Folly. You will see through her smooth talk. But many will be seduced. It says, “the sinner is taken by her.” There’s hope for escape—but so many get trapped; and it lays heavily on Solomon.

The quest continues in verse 27: “Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things—which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found.”

Does Solomon think less of women here? Does he believe that men are more upright? If he does, it’s not so promising—one-tenth of one percent are better. But I don’t think that’s what he’s saying, especially when he speaks so highly of marriage in 9:9, “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love.” Or given how he personifies wisdom in Proverbs as a strong Woman of Valor. What is he saying, then?

One possibility is that Solomon is reflecting autobiographically. He was gifted with wisdom beyond any other, and yet he fell prey to the seductive traps of Dame Folly. In 1 Kings 11:3, it says that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines who led his heart away from the Lord. Is that why he uses the number 1,000 here? Did he not find one woman among those one thousand? Perhaps. He could also be saying that faithful men and women are rare; not that they don’t exist at all.  

But even more helpful is clarifying the sense of the word “found” in the ESV. It means “to understand [comprehensively], to figure out.” So, let’s back up and read it again: “One man among a thousand I figured out, but a woman among all these I have not figured out.” It comes in the context of an accounting metaphor. He’s trying to add up everything and see what works. He wants to get to the bottom and have everything accounted for. But when it comes to dealing with humanity, he’s at a loss. People are complicated. To quote Max Rogland: “Even the members of his own sex are so varied and complex that he could only rarely claim to have really understood what made them tick, while the members of the opposite sex remained a closed book to him. With rare exceptions then, most human beings are a puzzle to him.”[iv]

Except for one thing. Verse 29, “See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” When we started Ecclesiastes, I said to read it as commentary on Genesis 1-3; and here we find it again. God made man upright. Genesis 1-2. Man was created with original righteousness. Then comes Genesis 3. Adam and Eve abandon that state and give themselves to sin. And ever since then, man has sought out many schemes. Man has struggled to make sense of it all apart from God; and when you try to make sense of it all apart from God, you end up making a mess of it all. Man has tried to do life by himself and for himself—apart from his Maker. Wisdom is hard to find when righteousness is lacking under the sun.

Righteousness Given from Above the Sun

Then what hope do we have? Sure, wisdom is precious. But is it even worth the search when the world is so dark, when the world lacks righteousness? This is the common thread running across all three sections. Wisdom is hard when righteousness is lacking—when righteous people perish in their righteousness; when there’s not a righteous man on earth who never sins; when the only thing the Preacher finds is that man used to be upright but now seeks out many schemes. Is it worth searching for wisdom in that kind of world? If that’s the end of the story, No.

But it’s not the end of the story. The good news is this: while our righteousness might be lacking under the sun, it isn’t lacking in the God who’s above the sun. And he gives his righteousness in full to whoever believes in the Son he sent.

We read from Romans 3 earlier, where Paul said that “all people are under sin,” and to support his claim he quoted verse 20: “no one does good and never sins.” All of us are accountable to God for our lack of righteousness; and there’s nothing we can do to work our way out. This is your greatest problem. Your greatest problem isn’t your marriage conflicts, or your parenting struggles, or your failing health, or what others have said about you, or the job you have. Your greatest problem is your own sin, your lack of righteousness, and how it separates you from God.

But listen to what God did for you: the righteousness of God above the sun has been manifested in Christ under the sun. When God’s Son took on flesh, he did not take to himself a fallen human nature. Jesus had no actual sin; and Jesus had no inherent sin.

Which makes him much like Adam in his original state. Adam didn’t have a fallen nature when he was first tempted. Remember? “God made man upright.” God tested Adam and Adam failed the test. Not Christ, though. Like Adam, Christ entered the world with a human nature but not a fallen one. He too was tested and tried and tempted. But unlike Adam’s world, the world Christ entered was fallen. He felt the widespread lack of righteousness. But unlike the first Adam, Christ never gave in.

It was way harder to remain faithful on this side of the Fall, and yet Christ never gave in. From birth to the cross, Christ remained constant and faithful under the pressure. He only ever did the Father’s will. To use language from our passage, he always feared God and always did what pleased him. He embodies God’s righteousness.

But more than just revealing God’s righteousness, he lived and died and rose again to give us God’s righteousness. Listen to this from Romans 5:18, “just as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Or 2 Corinthians 5:21, “[God] made [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in [Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God.”

In Christ, we possess a righteousness that’s above the sun. God gives people his righteousness when they trust in Christ to save them. Which means, for the Christian, our search for wisdom isn’t a vain pursuit anymore. When you relate to Christ, he makes you wise. He gives you wisdom, even while you’re still living under the sun. Matthew 7:24, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” Colossians 1:9, we can pray for God to fill us with “the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him.” Colossians 2:3, “in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

More than that, in Christ we get new hearts that fear the Lord. Remember verse 18? “Those who fear the Lord will come out from them both.” Jesus’ blood secures a new covenant in which God promised that the fear of the Lord would be in our hearts. Jesus also gives us access to the face of God. He’s entered the most holy places in heaven and brought us along with him to the throne of grace. We live before God’s face every day.

So, when the righteous man perishes and the wicked man prolongs his life—when you see crooked stuff like that—in Christ you can face that vanity and still fear God. When you overhear someone slandering you or belittling you, in Christ you know what it looks like to humble yourself, bless your enemies, and lay down your life for them. When the woman whose heart is snares seeks to trap you, in Christ you can find freedom from her traps and the power to do what pleases God instead. And when you’re tempted to put any trust in your own righteousness or wisdom, in Christ you’re reminded that you are nothing without him. Wisdom’s hard when righteousness is lacking. But in Christ, you will find both your wisdom and your righteousness for life under the sun.

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[i] Max Rogland understands verse 15 as an example of self-vindication that goes badly. The man is righteous, but he perishes in his pursuit of vindication before others. The instruction? Don’t be overly zealous in your pursuit of self-justification. However, see Choon-Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes, AB 18c (New York: Yale, 1997), 266-69; Eric Ortlund, Ecclesiastes (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2024), 123-28.

[ii] Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 222.

[iii] John is alluding to OT contexts where the word “abomination” appears, such as Deut 7:25; 12:31; 22:5; Prov 11:1; 12:22.

[iv] Max Rogland, “Ecclesiastes,” in ESV Expository Commentary 5 (Wheaton: Crossway, 2022), 1084.