Don’t Ask Stupid Questions

Introduction

How many times have you heard someone say there is no such thing as a stupid question? That’s not true. And I’m here to tell you that this morning, we’re going to look at a text that really deals with this concept or this idea, really in a specific direction. But it’s just a reality that there are times that questions are bad. And the wise man points that out in Ecclesiastes chapter 7, which we’ll read here in a few moments. Good questions really are directed toward greater discussion or deeper thought. They seek to understand better. But there are questions that really seek to justify actions or beliefs, like the man who says, Who is my neighbor? Right? When Jesus is trying to instruct. Or maybe a purposeful escape from reality, like Pilate, when he says, What is truth?

Right? I mean, these are dumb questions. We should be listening, we should be seeking understanding rather than just casting it off as if it doesn’t matter. Sometimes questions relate to scheming or attack or trapping, trying to trap someone or embarrass someone. How many times does this happen in scripture when the Pharisees or other rulers come to Jesus? They’re trying to trip him up and they ask him some question like, is it right to pay taxes to Caesar? They’re trying to catch him between two opinions or two ideas and get people mad at him. Or when they bring the woman who is caught in adultery, many questions about what’s going on here in this text, and they say, Hey, the law and Moses tells us we ought to stone a woman like this.

What do you say, Jesus? Right? Like they’re trying to trap him. They’re trying to catch him in his words and twist them and turn them to create some kind of problem because they don’t like him. Right? And so we see really dumb, stupid questions asked even in scripture, and they’re even pointed out to be such.

Bad questions can also be from the source of deceitfulness or manipulation or anger or frustration. There’s all sorts of sources. And sometimes, even in our minds, we ask questions, and we know they’re not good questions, but we have to wrestle with them anyway, and sometimes that’s fine. It’s not that we can’t ever do that. But we need to learn to ask really good questions rather than dwelling on the bad ones. Why would God let this happen? Right? Those are questions we’ve all had. But that’s something that we should allow to pass through our mind, and we should look at scripture and we should find answers. They are not something that we stew over and dwell on. And here we find a statement in Ecclesiastes 7, which is kind of in that ilk, it’s in that direction.

Something’s going on here. The wise man realizes this is a problem that humanity has from time to time. They want to ask this question or think this thought that really is from a really poor perspective. And so I think it’s something worth looking at this morning. Ecclesiastes chapter 7, beginning in verse 8. Ecclesiastes 7 in verse 8, it says, better is the end of a thing than its beginning. And the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. Say not, why were the former days better than these? For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. You know, the wise man is saying that’s a bad question.

You know, why were the former days better? And you understand this. We’ve we’ve all done this to some degree. And let me explain, first of all, what is not being said here. It’s not that you can’t ever think about the past, or that it’s always bad to think about things that were before. That’s not true at all. In fact, sometimes the things of the past can be extremely helpful. Even scripture can point to this. The former days can be corrective, or they can even be motivating. And so the Hebrew writer says, Recall the former days when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with suffering. So it’s not just that we should never think about the past. That’s not what the wise man’s saying here.

The past can be beneficial. It can be motivating, it can be encouraging, it can be something that helps correct us when things aren’t going right. And when we direct our mind to use it in that way, that’s a blessing and that’s beneficial. The problem in this text in Ecclesiastes 7 is really this longing or this desire to be in the past. Thinking about how much better it used to be. We typically call this nostalgia. We kind of long for the things, maybe we think about it like when we were a kid. Things were so great when we were a kid. And they probably were, because we didn’t have a whole lot to think about. Our parents had all the concerns and the worries, and we just lived life and things seemed grand.

And that’s great. That’s a wonderful time of life to be able to do that. But I think there’s some things we need to consider and then think about in terms of this idea of looking to the past that’ll be beneficial for us this morning, and not thinking about these questions or lingering on these questions that actually are detrimental to our own mental state. They’re detrimental to us spiritually when we get too focused on things that are actually not helpful to us moving forward. The foolishness indicated here is one which is dwelling and longing, thinking things like life isn’t fair, or why does this happen to me? It was so much better before. You know, these sorts of ideas or concepts that I think from time to time we all deal with.

1. I Just Can't Go Back to the Past

But here’s some things we need to think about the past. Why is it so foolish to go down this road and fixate on what used to be? The first of those is pretty simple. I just can’t go back to the past. Like this is fruitless thought. It doesn’t really do any good to think about how good it used to be and how wonderful it once was because I can’t go back. I am where I’m at, right? And so are you. And the preacher, as he’s called here in the book of Ecclesiastes, would say that’s just all vanity and striving after the win. And that is worthless thought to continue to dwell on the things that used to be and wish they could be that way and try to figure out some way to get them back to how it once was in the past days or in the past years.

All of that is pretty fruitless when really our attention should be on the things going forward. The Apostle Paul, who will quote a few times here this morning, says, Do all things without grumbling and disputing in Philippians chapter 2 and verse 14. In Philippians chapter 4, he says, I’ve learned in whatever situation I am to be content. And this sort of undue nostalgia is actually the sin of discontentment. That’s the source of it. We’re not happy with something that’s going on in our life. We’re looking at something in a negative light, and we’re now longing for something else.

Paul says in Philippians chapter 3, one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on. Paul’s not spending a lot of time looking at things in the past and dwelling on those things of the past, the things that he gave up, the sacrifices he made. Those come up, and even in Philippians 3, he mentions them for a purpose to learn from them and to move on from them. But the one thing he’s doing is he’s pressing forward. He’s looking ahead. And so the very basic foundational concept when we get caught in this cycle of nostalgia or thinking about how great the past was and how we wish we could go back there is really simply we just can’t do it.

2. Former Days Are Better in Memory Than in Reality

And the second of these is just the reality that the former days are better in memory than they are in reality. Let me just step back from this for just a second and make sure you understand what I’m saying and what I’m not saying. This doesn’t mean that the former days weren’t better. Because they might have been.

A better job, whatever the thing is, I don’t know. And it could be that things in the past were better. But at the same time, we also tend to aggrandize the past. To have a selective memory. To think about how great it all once was, but actually also forgetting all the difficulties and trials. Right? The struggles, when we get in this sort of mindset, the struggles and the difficulties of the moment seem to far outweigh the things that we struggled with and dealt with in the past. And those sort of pass on as if they didn’t exist when we have this longing or this desire to go back. And sometimes this is from a source of maybe anger or frustration, which in the text itself it actually deals with some of this.

Just preceding verse 10. There’s some other wisdom that we won’t go deep into this morning, but it’s interesting that he talks about the end of the thing being better than the beginning. We get excited about the beginnings of things, right? But he’s saying actually the end is better, right? And it’s better to be patient. It’s better to not be quick to get angry or to be frustrated. And sometimes the source of these kinds of thoughts comes from this kind of frustration or anger of things that are happening in the moment rather than being patient and enduring, which is what the Hebrew writer encourages people to do. Right? He says to endure, to be patient, to not look back, to be pushing forward. And so the reality is sometimes we look at that things in the past and we see it in a way that is not actually real.

And when we have this sort of mindset, we imagine how great things used to be, but even worse, we kind of find all the problems with things as they now are. I think maybe this is best illustrated by getting into the mind of a child. You know, a child at a specific moment, it can be, you know, they’re putting their socks on or whatever it might be. That can be the most horrible thing that has ever happened. You know, and they can’t make it off the stairs or out of their bedroom because that sock is so annoying. You know, we’ve all been there. You’re a parent. And I’m not discounting this reality in their mind. It’s probably true. It seems like the worst thing ever, that little line doesn’t line up, and they’re trying to put their foot in the shoe and all of that.

Now, to us as adults, we think that’s all kind of silly and funny. But my point is, in the moment, that seems like the worst thing ever. Right? It was so much better before when I didn’t have to put my socks on, or whatever the thing is. And so we see it so clearly with our little people who were raising. But the same sort of thing can happen as adults too. When we deal with the moment and we’re looking at all the pressures, and it seems so difficult and hard, and we emphasize every little thing. This is called thought attack, right? We just start thinking of all the horrible things that are going on, as small as they might be, they just keep piling up more and more and more, and we’re just so fixated on that and how good it used to be.

3. Wisdom Protects Us

Now, of course, the thing about this is sometimes it’s almost involuntary, right? We catch ourselves in these moments. And we may ask these kinds of questions, but the ability to get out of this to pivot away from that sort of thinking is really what I want us to think about this morning. It’s not that we’re never going to have these thoughts and we’re never going to think about the past and how good it was. That’s probably just a reality in our lives as humans. But that’s why we need this sort of this call back to reality that I can’t go back there anyway, right? And I’m probably making it all seem a little bit better than it actually was in reality. And I want us to see that the wise man tells us that wisdom protects us, right?

This is the sort of message he gives as you follow after verse 10. Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money. He’s making an analogy here, right? It’s it’s nice to have some money to protect you from things when they go bad, right? This is the idea. Wisdom is like that. Wisdom is a means of protection. Right? So when we acquire knowledge and we acquire wisdom, and then we find ourselves in these moments where we’re working through a difficult thought or question, having this wisdom beforehand is a major asset in our arsenal. It’s extremely helpful to know these sorts of things. Like I’m probably making this seem a lot better in my mind than it really was.

You know, I remember growing up, I was a little boy in Kentucky. I don’t even know what the car was, my mom might remember, but I always thought this car was super cool, had like leather seats and all the push-button things to change the radio. Some of you have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s okay. And when you’re a kid, you don’t know any different about anything. I that car probably wasn’t all that great, but it seemed really cool at the time. Right? I mean, I perspective can really be off when we look at things in life. And so it’s good for us to recognize that, especially as we get older and we mature and we gain wisdom, realizing that how I feel in the moment, or the way I’m thinking about something in the moment can be very off.

It may not actually represent reality for what it really is. And so wisdom protects us by giving us much needed perspective, which is really what Ecclesiastes is all about. Revelation is actually similar in many ways. You may not never thought that Ecclesiastes and Revelation are similar, but they are. It’s kind of this pivoting back and forth between the lens from the earth, or under the sun, as the preacher calls it, and the perspective from heaven. There’s a lot more of the under the sun type of language in Ecclesiastes and a lot more of the perspective from heaven stuff in Revelation. But they’re both doing essentially the same thing. When you look at life from the viewpoint and the vantage point of the preacher, things look horrible.

They’re boring, they’re mundane, you just keep doing the same stuff every day. It’s only when you see this from a greater purpose and perspective that it all makes sense. I mean, if we think about it, and I can’t imagine living a life like this, but if you just think about it, every single day we get up and we do the same thing. We get up, we get ready, we go to work, we work for a while, we come home, we’re tired, we try to do some stuff with our family, we have to stop and eat, we have to sleep. It’s just the same stuff all the time. That’s what the wise man talks about. But he keeps having these breaks all throughout this perspective from a human perspective, from human eyes.

He keeps breaking from that all through this book, and he’s realizing, but there’s a different perspective, right? I mean, yes, when you see this from a human perspective, it doesn’t seem all that fun. It’s not all that great, and it really isn’t. Unless you also see this through the eyes of God. And so at the end of chapter 2, after he’s talked about all the vanity of life and how things are worthless, and he’s tried to do all these things that make himself happy, and none of it really works. He comes to the end and says in verse 24, there is nothing better. That’s a little cue phrase right there. So there’s nothing better. Go through and mark it every time it’s in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Now you’re getting a perspective that’s heavenly, that’s from the mind of God, appreciating God for who he is. There’s nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also I saw is from the hand of God. For apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy. But to the sinner, he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and striving after wind. When you understand God and who he is and the purpose behind everything, it changes everything. Without God, you’re just a gatherer. You’re just a collector. And you’re just going to give stuff to people, and you’re going to die, and it’s going to go to somebody else, and none of it’s going to make any difference.

That’s life apart from God. But life and appreciation with God, realizing that this is God’s gift to man, chapter 3 and verse 13. That he’s given us work to do, and we can do this work and we can please him, and we can be joyful, we can enjoy the work of our hands, and we can eat and drink and take pleasure in life. When we understand all of that from the perspective that there is a God who loves us, it changes everything about the way we view the world. And that is true even through difficulty, even through the inevitable struggles that we face in life, that cause us to sometimes think, at the very least, why were the former days better than these.

4. Dwelling on the Past Blinds Us to Blessings

And that is it’s foolish to dwell on the past, to linger there, to long for it, to have this undue affection and nostalgia for all the things past. Because all that actually really does is blind us to the blessings we have in the moment. It puts us in that mindset we talked about earlier, where we find all the bad things. Right? Have you been there before? You’re frustrated, you’re upset, you haven’t eaten enough, and so you’re angry. And so you start thinking of all the bad things that are going on in your life. And it’s super easy to do. It can be like the smallest thing. Like I didn’t wake up and my alarm went off. You know, it’s just like that’s really not that big of a deal.

But it becomes this huge thing in my list of items. And then it continues to block joy in my life, the sorts of things we just were thinking about. How God has blessed us, and we can enjoy the things that we have from the work of our hands that God has given us to do. When we’re so focused on how bad things are now, and we start listing them and thinking all about them, we really can’t enjoy the things of the moment. Chapter 5, verses 18, beginning, it says, Behold, what have I seen to be good and fitting is to eat and to drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun. We’ve already talked about that, but here’s another one of these verses.

But he goes on. I want us to see what he says here in relationship to this. It says, The few days that his life is God has given him, for this is his lot, right? So I should be enjoying this because I have a few days. God’s blessed me with that, and I should enjoy that. Verse 19. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil, this is the gift of God. This is all things we’ve already seen before. But notice this last verse. For he will not much remember the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart. This is what we’re not doing when we are fixated on the past.

When our focus becomes thinking about only the things of the past and how they used to be so great, and they may have been.

When we long and we have affection and we dwell, and that becomes our focus and our fixation, we’re only stealing joy from the present.

He doesn’t need to think about all those things in the past. Because he’s caught up with the joys in the moment. This is where he’s at the end of chapter 5. From an earthly perspective, we’re always going to be trying to figure things out. We’re never going to have all the answers. It’s going to be a struggle, just like this preacher. He said he applied his heart to know wisdom and no madness and folly. This is chapter one. I perceive that this also is but a striving after the wind. For much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge, increases sorrow. There’s always going to be things we don’t know, and we’re going to seek for answers, and sometimes those things are going to frustrate us because we can’t find them.

That’s just part of life. But what the wise man found is what’s best, what’s fitting, is even in the midst of all of that. Appreciating the gift of God and what he’s given us right now in the moment. The answer is to eat and to drink and to find enjoyment and to see that it’s all from the hand of God. And that we really can’t change the things that God is doing. It says, consider the work of God. This is chapter 7 and verse 13. Who can make straight what he has made crooked? You know, all the things we think about and all the things we want to try to figure out, it’s not going to change what God’s going to do. God has his purposes and he has his plans, and there’s going to be a lot of things I never understand about any of that, and that’s okay.

But what I can do is appreciate the things that he’s given me in the moment. In other words, it’s really a decision to live with a certain kind of attitude. A commitment to find joy in our lot in life, whatever that may be. And that doesn’t mean it’s better than it used to be, or that it’s worse than it used to be. It doesn’t really mean any of that. It just means that we are focused on the moment and what God has given us. We are committed to seeing the blessings that God has given around us rather than being so fixated on what we don’t have or how hard things might be. We realize that this is something that’s temporary. And God has blessed us in so many ways.

Conclusion

And so there’s no need to long for the former times. So it doesn’t mean that the struggles of the present are not bad. It doesn’t mean that things weren’t better in the past. It doesn’t mean we can’t ever think about the past. It’s not really the point of Ecclesiastes 7, but it’s putting everything into perspective with the right frame of reference, thinking about God and what he has done in the right way. And certainly all of those things can be true. It could have been better back then, it could be worse now. But the problem is when we begin fixating on what was. And we don’t allow what is, what’s happening in the moment, to see God and all his glory and what he’s doing in this world, working for us something that is far greater in glory in the world to come.

When we fixate on the past, it is stealing from us the joy of moments like this, where we’re with God’s people. Moments where we’re praising God together with one voice. Moments when we realize the power of the creator of the whole universe and all the things that he is working and accomplishing according to his will, that in blessing us, he has sent his son, who is the summation of all things. Christ brings all things to a head, things in heaven and things on earth, he says in Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 10. And that God has accomplished all of this for our benefit and for our blessing, not necessarily for all things to be good and comfortable in this life. But he’s working for us something far greater in the end.

We will surround his throne and we will praise him as his people forever. If that’s something that you want in your life, we invite you to do that this morning. I don’t know the struggles that each of you are facing. But I do know that the wise man Ecclesiastes covered them somewhere. Life is just difficult sometimes. There’s struggles because that’s just the way it is. And he talks all about that. But here’s the point. It’s horrible and it’s a struggle, and it’s difficult and it’s mundane and it’s boring apart from God. But when you are with God, it changes all of that into glory. It changes all of that into his majesty. It changes all of that into blessing of eternal life. And so what I’m offering you this morning is that you take the suffering, the struggles, the depression, the monotony of life, all the things that seem terrible and horrible and difficult, and you can transition all of those to the glory of God by now joining yourself to him through baptism in Jesus Christ and becoming a new person, not working for this world, but working for something far greater.

Can we help you do that this morning? Why don’t you come now as we stand and we sing.