Bottom line up front: A Conversion Story

Context: Just for the sake of candor, Ecclesiastes is probably my favorite book of Scripture. It is part of the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament, so that is appealing to me. And it’s highly literary; that also appeals to me. Plus, it is penned by one who lived life to the max, and eventually found out the hard way that wisdom is found not in indulgence but in God. That, too, appeals to me.

Solomon, for all his faults, was a man who laid it out bare. As I’m wont to say, he went from hero to zero (and back again) many times. But the context of the one verse I want to look at today concerns the conversion of R.C. Sproul, indubitably one of the 20th and 21st centuries’ greatest theological minds. R.C. said he was converted by God, and Ecclesiastes 11:3 was instrumental in that conversion.

Text: “If the clouds are full of fain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie” (Eccl 11:3, ESV).

Takeaway: One might scoff and mutter, “Really? That verse? Are you kidding me?” But slow down and think. What’s the book of Ecclesiastes about? Vanity of foolish pursuits vs. fulfillment in God. Wisdom vs. folly. Under the sun vs. under the Son. And so when Sproul’s friend confronted Sproul with Ecclesiastes 11:3, God used the word picture in that verse to quicken Sproul’s soul. He (Sproul) saw that if he continued to live a life of self-indulgence, it was just so much vanity and futility. He would be like that tree that fell in the forest of the cosmos–utterly insignificant. But if he understood that he was not just a random collocation of atoms, if he understood that he was created in the image of the sovereign God, suddenly everything made sense. And Sproul was converted, and he became a massive influence on his and subsequent generations.

Here’s the way one writer describes this event: “A fellow student of R.C. Sproul read this verse to Sproul while the latter was a freshman in college in September 1957. Sproul was immediately convicted, seeing himself as a dead tree, fallen and rotting on the ground. After a few hours of wrestling in prayer, seeking the mercy of God, R.C. Sproul was converted. He later confessed that he is likely the only person in church history to have been converted by this verse.”

Let us not underestimate God.