In 1984, James Ealy was convicted in the 1982 brutal murders of 33 year old Christine Parker, her two children and one grandchild. Two years later, the Illinois Appellate Court overturned the conviction - even as justices acknowledged Ealy almost certainly was guilty. They said police had arrested him without probable cause and conducted an illegal search, and they threw out virtually all of the evidence against him. Ealy was eventually released from prison after his parole from another offense in 1999.
Two decades after his first murder conviction was overturned, Ealy was arrested in December 2006 for the murder of Mary Hutchinson, the manager at the Burger King where Ealy worked. He is currently in jail without bail awaiting trial for that murder.
Just last month, Robert Lee Stinson was released after spending 23 years in prison for the 1985 first degree murder of a 63 year old woman. But new analysis of DNA and bite mark evidence revealed that none of that evidence could tie Stinson to the crime of which he was convicted.
Those are just two examples of the fact that injustice does exist in this world. Here “under the sun”, the guilty sometimes go free and the innocent are sometimes punished. But this is certainly nothing new. As Qoheleth looked around, he observed that the very same kinds of injustice were prevalent in his day as well. But that observation led Qoheleth to ask another important question: “Can we draw any conclusions about God based on what we observe here on earth?” Let’s read our passage for this morning and see how Qoheleth answered that question.
16 Moreover I saw under the sun: In the place of judgment, Wickedness was there; And in the place of righteousness, Iniquity was there. 17 I said in my heart, "God shall judge the righteous and the wicked, For there is a time there for every purpose and for every work." 18 I said in my heart, "Concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals." 19 For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. 21 Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth? 22 So I perceived that nothing is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his heritage. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?
Ecclesiastes 3:16-22 (NKJV)
At first glance, this short section seems to be dealing with several unrelated issues. Qoheleth begins by addressing the kind of injustice that I already referred to. And then he goes on to make a comparison between man and animals – another passage from Ecclesiastes that when it is divorced from its context leads to all kinds of erroneous conclusions.
But a further examination of the passage reveals that these are not just some disconnected rantings and ravings, but rather a coherent train of thought. What Qoheleth discovered, and what I want us to see this morning, is that when it comes to God, there is more than meets the eye. We can’t “figure out” God based on what we see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. We’ve certainly seen that already in our journey through Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth has already pointed out that trying to make sense of our life here on earth or to try and somehow “figure out” God based on our experiences here on earth is only vapor and it provides us with no fulfillment or joy in our lives.
But this passage is the clearest warning yet against our tendency to base our ideas about God on our own experiences. We are also brought face to face with one of our greatest conflicts in life – the tension between God, whom we cannot see, and that which we can see. Or as the Apostle Paul described it, the tension between faith and sight:
We live by faith, not by sight.
2 Corinthians 5:7 (NIV)
Although it is sometimes difficult to see in the midst of the apparent chaos of the Book of Ecclesiastes, this tension between faith and sight is really the essence of the entire book. Qoheleth is constantly looking at his world “under the sun” and attempting to reconcile what he observes with what he knows about God. And that is not always an easy task, as all of us have discovered in our own lives. So Qoheleth faced the same decision that all of us must make day-by-day, even moment-by-moment:
Am I going to base my understanding of God and how I live my life on what I see around me in this world, or am I going to rely on what God has revealed to me in His Word?
The message this morning is going to differ from my usual format. If you’ve been here for any time at all, you know how much I like to organize my sermons in a logical manner and give you a nice outline with some blanks that you can fill in. And in spite of the fact that Ecclesiastes doesn’t have a structure that makes it easy to do that, I’ve been o pretty successful each week so far. But when I tried to do that again this week, I just couldn’t do it. I must have tried five or six different outlines and structures over a couple of days, but none of them seemed quite right to me.
And then it finally dawned on me! I was trying to do exactly what had frustrated Qoheleth so much. I was trying to put this passage in a nice, tidy, neat little box that I was comfortable with when the nature of the passage made that effort nothing but vapor. In essence, I was trying to mold this message into the pattern I could see on the surface when what I really needed to do was to get to what is beneath the surface. There is definitely more than meets the eye here and that truth doesn’t necessarily lend itself to an outline with three points that all use clever alliteration. So I encourage you to just listen this morning and go ahead and make whatever notes you’d like on your bulletin insert.
As I mentioned, at first it appears that Qoheleth is addressing two completely different topics here. He begins with his observations about the injustice around him and then he changes topics and writes about how men, like animals, die and return to dust. But there is a connection between these seemingly unrelated topics. In both cases, Qoheleth records his observations about what he sees going on under the sun and then thinks about what those observations might reveal to him about the nature of God and man.
He begins by looking at the politics and the criminal justice system of his day and he comes to the same conclusion that any observer might make today. In the places where justice should take place, there was only wickedness. Just like today, innocent people were often punished and the guilty often went free.
The problem is that our judicial system is only as good as the people who participate in the process – law enforcement officials, prosecutors and defense attorneys, witnesses and jurors. The system often fails because these humans are often motivated by their own sinful desires. The system doesn’t work perfectly because sinful men are incapable of bringing about perfect justice.
As Qoheleth observed all the injustice in the world, I’m sure he had to be asking some of the same questions that we hear all the time:
• Why does God allow suffering in this world?
• Why do the wicked prosper?
• Why do bad things happen to good people?
I think if we’re honest that most of us here this morning, even those of us who are Christ followers have asked the very same questions. But the one thing all those questions have in common is that they are making assumptions about God’s character based on our own observations and not based on what God has revealed to us in the Bible.
In 1981, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote the well-known book titled When Bad Things Happen to Good People, a book written in response to the death of his three year old son. In a sense, Rabbi Kushner was a lot like Qoheleth. He looked at the world around him and tried to form his ideas about the nature of God from what he observed. So not surprisingly, he arrived at some conclusions that just don’t conform to what we know about God from the Bible.
Kushner concluded that God is loving and just, so that therefore He never wills that bad things happen to good people. But according to Kushner, the problem is that God just doesn’t have the power to insure that His will is carried out in every case. According to Kushner God always intends good, but He is unable to carry it out in actual experience. So, ultimately, bad things happen to good people for various reasons that are outside of God’s control.
Although we can certainly find much to argue with when it comes to Kushner’s findings, it’s not hard to understand how he came to those conclusions since he based them on his own painful experiences.
Fortunately, at least in this case, Qoheleth was able to look beyond just his own experiences and understand that there was more here than just meets the eye. We find his conclusion in verse 17:
17 I said in my heart, "God shall judge the righteous and the wicked, For there is a time there for every purpose and for every work."
Just as Qoheleth had written earlier in the chapter, God has an appointed time for every season of our lives. And one of those appointed times is a time of judgment. This is one of the first times in the Book of Ecclesiastes where we see that Qoheleth does indeed have faith. Perhaps he was influenced by Psalm 73, with which he certainly would have been familiar. In that Psalm, the Psalmist looks around at the injustice of the wicked prospering in the world while the righteous suffer. But, in the presence of God, he is able to understand that apparent injustice from God’s point of view.
When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.
Psalm 73:16, 17 (NIV)
It would have been very easy for Qoheleth and the Psalmist to observe all the injustice around them and, like Rabbi Kushner, to come to some erroneous conclusions based only on what they could see. But there is evidence that they both decided to evaluate what they observed in light of what God had already revealed to them about Himself rather than tailor their concept of God to what they could see.
In particular, Qoheleth needed faith to understand that God would one day bring about complete and perfect justice in every life. There was nothing that he could observe that would lead him to that conclusion. But He chose to trust in what he already knew about God’s justice based on what God had clearly revealed in His Word.
In verse 18, Qoheleth makes an interesting transition to his next illustration. Like all the other seasons of life, the timing of God’s judgment is up to Him, not to us. And God often chooses to delay that justice so that man will see what he is really like.
In Genesis 3, we read the account of how Adam and Eve tried to elevate themselves to the position of deity by eating the forbidden fruit. And the result was that, at least in one respect, they would now be just like the animals:
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."
Genesis 3:19 (NIV)
This passage always reminds me of the story of a little boy who was sitting in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher describe how in the beginning of creation, God made mankind from the dust of the earth and how after death our bodies will decompose, and we’ll return to dust. The little boy turned to his friend, and he said, "You know, I think I got somebody under my bed at home. But I’m not sure whether he’s coming or going."
Qoheleth picks up on that concept here when he writes that both men and animals share the same fate. They both die. In a sense death is God’s message to us that we are finite and limited. We are not God, but rather we are answerable to Him. We may think we are gods but the truth is that we are nothing more than beasts. So we die like beasts. Death is the ultimate proof that we have no control over the seasons of our life.
But Qoheleth is not making the case here that we are just like animals in every aspect. We see that in verse 21 when he asks this question:
21 Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth?
Qoheleth clearly believes that there is a difference in what happens to men and to animals upon their death. There is certainly adequate teaching about life after death and the idea of resurrection in the Old Testament that Qoheleth would have understood that man has a soul which survives beyond the grave. This passage from Isaiah is one such example:
But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.
Isaiah 26:19 (NIV)
In our world, people have some up with all kinds of theories about what happens after we die. They run the gamut from reincarnation to “that’s all folks.” A 2003 survey by the Barna Group revealed some interesting information about Americans’ views on the afterlife:
• 81% believe in some kind of life after death; another 9% are unsure and only 10% contend there is no life after we die here on earth.
• 79% believe that man has a soul that will live forever, either in God’s presence or absence
• Only .5% of people believe that they will go to hell, while 64% expect to go to heaven. Another 5% expect to come back in some other life form and 5% believe they will simply cease to exist.
But what is interesting about all these different opinions is that not one of them can be proven based on empirical data and observation. That seems to be exactly the point that Qoheleth is making here. Based on what we can observe and measure, we can’t prove that there is a difference between the fate of men and animals. So when he asks the question “who knows”, he is merely pointing out that no one can prove the nature of the afterlife based on what they can see and measure.
Although we can’t see it as clearly as we could in the case of injustice, the context of the entire Book of Ecclesiastes does make it clear that Qoheleth does have faith when it comes to the idea of life after death. On the other side of the cross, he certainly couldn’t have the depth of understanding about many of the details as we do today. But nonetheless, there is adequate evidence that Qoheleth had faith that there was more to life than just the vapor we experience “under the sun”.
Today, we have so much more evidence about the nature of life after death. We have the eyewitness accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We have the inspired words of the New Testament writers. Dana and I shared a lot of that information last summer in our series on heaven. But even with all our medical and scientific achievements, there is still no empirical evidence or data that can prove that there really is life beyond our life here “under the sun.” It still requires faith to accept that what we read in the Bible about those things is true.
So how are we to respond to the injustice that we experience in this world? How are we to respond to the fact that we are all going to die and that there is no way to prove empirically that there is life after death? Qoheleth answers that question in verse 22:
22 So I perceived that nothing is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his heritage.
This echoes the advice that Qoheleth has already given, but there is an important addition here. We are given a reason that we are to enjoy what God has given us here on earth – it is our heritage or inheritance. When we receive some kind of property as an inheritance here on earth, it usually requires that we do some kind of work on that property in order to maintain our enjoyment of that property. For instance, if we are given a car, we have to change the oil, wash it and perform any needed maintenance so that we can enjoy the use of the car.
In the context of Chapter 3, our heritage is the circumstances that God has placed into our lives. So the idea here is that we need to just work with the circumstances that God has given to us in order to serve God faithfully and joyfully each and every day wherever we are. And, as Qoheleth demonstrates, that requires us to move beyond what we can just observe here on earth, and live by faith, because there is more to life than just what meets the eye.
So let me close with the very same question that I posed earlier:
Am I going to base my understanding of God and how I live my life on what I see around me in this world, or am I going to rely on what God has revealed to me in His Word?
