Life Lessons II

Life Lesson 3: Finish your Race (7:5–8). A few years ago, our men’s ministry watched a video series called “Stepping Up.” The series included interviews with prominent pastors and leaders talking about godly manhood. Within a year of us watching that series, three had been disqualified from ministry for major moral failures, explosive anger, arrogance, and deception, and renouncing the Christian faith.

This is what 7:5–8 is about. It’s easy to start strong: a race, a job, a school year, a marriage, a ministry. But it’s the finish that counts: "Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit" (v8). Don’t become self-assured or self-righteous just because you started well. Don’t brag about your accomplishments or assume you’ve got life under control. Don’t think you’re smart and talented and determined enough to make it all work. Wise people are humble! They know that left to themselves, they are weak, foolish, sinful, and capable of blowing up their lives in the next half-hour. It is the sheer grace of God that has brought them safe this far, and it’s only God’s grace that will get them to the end. Verse 7 is the Old Testament version of “Let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" (1 Cor 10:12). Life’s pressures can drive even wise people to madness; the godliest can be corrupted under the right circumstances.

That’s why, if we’re going to finish well, we have to be humble enough to accept rebuke (7:5). The fool laughs at correction, because he’s sure that already he has it all figured out. Like the crackling of thorns under a pot, his confidence burns bright and hot at the moment, but it won’t last. So stay humble! Be teachable! Receive correction! Finish your race!

Life Lesson 4: Find joy (7:9–14). My freshman English class read Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. It features a lady named Ms. Havisham, who is jilted at the altar as a young woman, and never moves on. She wears her wedding dress every day until it is yellow with age. She leaves the wedding cake out on the table until it is covered in mold. She has every clock in the house stopped at the hour of her loss. Then, she adopts a little girl and raises her to be cold and hard so that she will never be hurt like she had been. In the end, Ms. Havisham’s wedding dress, the symbol of bitterness, catches on fire and she burns to death.

I know her story is extreme, but anger and bitterness really can imprison you and really can burn you up. In v9–10, Solomon lets us overhear those who are angry about life not going their way. The inner grumble of their heart is always: "why were the former days better than these? My life was great; now it’s ruined." Nostalgia is dangerous stuff.

That’s why Solomon tells us that we all have a choice to make. You can live like Ms. Havisham: sour about the bad hand you’ve been dealt, fantasizing about some imaginary past when everything was perfect. Or, you can trust God and find joy in your imperfect life. There will always be “crooked” things in my life that I can’t straighten (13). In this broken world, we all get days of prosperity and days of adversity (14). But all of my days are in God's hands (Psalm 31:15).

So on the day of adversity, I don’t have to love it or understand it—but I can trust God and draw near to him. And when the day of prosperity comes, I will a) not fail to thank God for it, and b) not waste it worried about when the next day of adversity is coming (see Matt 6:34)! I will enjoy the fire out of my day of prosperity as a sweet and undeserved gift from my heavenly Father!

Every day, we can choose to find joy in the Lord. Will you?

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Article by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church