All Kinds Of People Series

You can learn a lot from watching people. You could be at the Atlanta airport at the busiest airport in the world or at a quiet rural restaurant and you will find a variety of people. We can become students of people.

Knowing what makes people tick and learning from others is wise. We are learning from the observations Solomon made about people. He was observing the oppressed, the businessman, the idle man, the individualist, and the powerful king.

Observing the oppressed.

Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. 2 And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. 3 But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 4:1-3)

Solomon observed the few with power making all the money and those who they oppressed where left miserable. Israel had a divine justice system based on Old Testament law, but it too could be corrupted. We see the victims of oppression shedding tears because the unjust oppress them.

The situation for the oppressed was that Solomon congratulated those who are already dead. Not in the sense that they went to heaven, but in the sense of escaping the torment the oppressed experience in this life. We need to pray for those in authority, 1 Timothy 2:1-6.

My wife has been ministering to some of the most oppressed refugees. She was invited to the birthday party of the group. We sat on the floor and ate a meal with them. One of them who spoke English thanked me. He said to me, we have been treated like we are not even humans, so you do not know how much this means for you to sit with us and have a meal.

It is not going to be too difficult to find the oppressed near you. What is difficult is to minister to the oppressed and take risks. This same oppressed community has a lady who is alone and isolated with three young boys. To make matters worse there is a scabies outbreak on all of them.

My wife and her friends have gone the extra mile to wash their clothes and get them medicated cream to treat this infestation. It comes at a risk. They could bring scabies to their own family in an attempt to help the helpless. They prayed about it and are going to minister to the oppressed. There will always be inherent risks in ministry to the oppressed.

Observing those who work hard with wrong motives.

Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. (Ecclesiastes 4:5)

Solomon was observing people who were working hard, and he observed that their inward motive was envy. We could find this type of person very commonly. Even if we looked in the mirror, we might see someone who is working hard because they are competitive and want to be a little bit ahead of their neighbor.

We call this kind of motivation, keeping up with the Joneses. This is the idiom used comparing ourselves to our neighbor as the benchmark of how we are doing climbing the social ladder. The man Solomon observed had a good skill but wrong motives. This kind of social climbing is vanity. Those who climb this ladder may get up high only to find the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

What you will observe by anyone motivated by envy is outward appearance. They may go into debt to fund cars or boats or name-brand clothes just to appear more prosperous. This is the kind of person credit card companies profit from. Their envy can lead them into a destructive economic trap. We should not be surprised that Solomon saw this pursuit as vanity. Getting ahead of your neighbor is never going to bring true contentment.

Observing the idle.

The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh. 6 Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. (Ecclesiastes 4:5-6)

If the workaholic is vanity, then you might think the opposite folding up the hands and doing nothing would have meaning, but no. The idle person who is motivated by temporary pleasure may have escaped the rat race, but they have exchanged one meaningless vanity for another.

Better is a little with the fear of the LORD

than great treasure and trouble with it. (Proverbs 15:16)