Last Saturday, a 50-1 long shot named Mine That Bird won the 135th Kentucky Derby, surging all the way from last place to first on the final turn and the home stretch. This was an improbable victory for a horse that was purchased last year for only $9,500, a real bargain compared to the millions paid for some of the other competitors in the race. In his previous race Mine That Bird had finished out of the money in 4th place at a race at Sunland Park in New Mexico and his trainer Chip Woolley, Jr. had to load him in his trailer and pull him to Churchill Downs with his pickup truck in order to compete.
It is just this kind of unpredictability that Qoheleth has in mind as he continues writing in Ecclesiastes chapter 9:
1 For I considered all this in my heart, so that I could declare it all: that the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God. People know neither love nor hatred by anything they see before them. 2 All things come alike to all: One event happens to the righteous and the wicked; To the good, the clean, and the unclean; To him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As is the good, so is the sinner; He who takes an oath as he who fears an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: that one thing happens to all. Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. 4 But for him who is joined to all the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 For the living know that they will die; But the dead know nothing, And they have no more reward, For the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished; Nevermore will they have a share In anything done under the sun. 7 Go, eat your bread with joy, And drink your wine with a merry heart; For God has already accepted your works. 8 Let your garments always be white, And let your head lack no oil. 9 Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life which He has given you under the sun, all your days of vanity; for that is your portion in life, and in the labor which you perform under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going. 11 I returned and saw under the sun that - The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all. 12 For man also does not know his time: Like fish taken in a cruel net, Like birds caught in a snare, So the sons of men are snared in an evil time, When it falls suddenly upon them.
Ecclesiastes 9:1-12 (NKJV)
Much of what we find in this passage seems quite familiar to all of us who have been here throughout our journey through Ecclesiastes. So perhaps the three principles that I’m going to share with you this morning are not necessarily new. But I think it will be helpful for us to be reminded of them again in a slightly different way. So let’s look at the three broad principles that we find here in this passage.
1. My life is in God’s hand
• Even when life doesn’t make sense
Once again, Qoheleth laments the fact that from his perspective “under the sun” life doesn’t always make sense. As he has done before, he describes how the righteous often suffer and the wicked sometimes prosper.
And then in verse 11, one of those familiar passages in Ecclesiastes that is often taken out of context, he describes last week’s Kentucky Derby. The race does not always go to the fastest, the battle is not always won by the strongest, the wise man does not always prosper, the most skillful person does not always get the job. And from our perspective here on earth this all seems to be due purely to chance.
But Qoheleth recognizes that is not the case. As he makes clear in verse 1, the works of man are firmly in God’s hand. And the logical conclusion that we must make from that fact is that…
• God has a purpose in all that He does
Just because we can’t figure it out doesn’t negate the fact that God has a purpose in all that He does. I’m reminded of God’s words to the prophet Isaiah:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD."As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
Isaiah 55:8-11 (NIV)
We shouldn’t be surprised that we are totally incapable of figuring out what God is doing. He is God and we are merely humans. His thoughts and ways are perfect, regardless of whether we can figure them out or not. And God has promised that his word, which is His revelation of Himself to us, will accomplish what He desires and achieve His purposes as we appropriate it and apply it in our lives. That is why Paul could make this promise to his readers:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28 (NIV)
For those that love God and have been called according to His purpose, God has promised that He will use everything in their lives for good. That means that even the most painful and difficult things that we endure in life can be used by God for good. But we often have a hard time understanding how that can be. I’m convinced that is because our idea of “good” and God’s idea of “good” are usually not consistent. But if we go to the very next verse in Romans 8, we find that God has clearly defined what He means by “good”:
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Romans 8:29 (NIV)
The “good” that God wants for us is that we would become more and more like Jesus. And God, in His infinite wisdom understands that it often requires pain and difficultly to accomplish that purpose. So often it is our greatest tragedy that turns into our greatest joy. It is our loss that leads us to an even greater gain. It is our sickness that causes us to trust even more deeply in God.
2. I am going to die
Every one of us in this room this morning has a terminal disease. Even though I can’t tell you what that disease is or when it will claim your life, I do know this – every single one of us in this room today is going to die. Once again Qoheleth points out that death is the great equalizer when it comes to our life here on earth “under the sun”. Everyone dies - the righteous and the wicked, the clean and the unclean, the religious and the irreligious, those who commit their lives to God and those who don’t.
The old adage that “you only go around once in life” is confirmed here in Ecclesiastes as well as in this familiar passage from Hebrews:
Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment
Hebrews 9:27 (NIV)
We only get one chance at life here on this earth. As Qoheleth describes in verse 6, we only get one chance to love, to hate and to envy. Then we die and we no longer get to carry on with those and other activities here on earth. He reinforces that idea again in verse 10 when he documents that we won’t have the opportunity to carry on all the activities of this life once we’re in the grave.
As with much of the rest of the book of Ecclesiastes, if we’re not careful to look at the entire context, we could easily draw the wrong conclusions here. As I’ve pointed out previously, Qoheleth is not advocating a fatalistic approach to life at all. And he is certainly not saying that death is to be preferred to life. In fact, for maybe the first time in the book, he clearly refutes that idea when he writes that a living dog is better off than a dead lion. You have to realize that in Qoheleth’s day, dogs were not the cuddly, cute little pets of our day. They were generally wild scavengers who frequented the dumps and trash heaps. But even a living dog was better off that a regal lion who was dead.
Let me also add that Qoheleth is not advocating in any way the idea that there is no existence after death. We must remember that he is only viewing life from his perspective on earth here “under the sun”. So he is not dealing at all here with what happens after we die. But in verse 4, he certainly implies that is something more to life than just our time here on earth when he writes that the living still have the opportunity for hope. We’re going to address that verse in a bit more detail as we look at the third, and most important, principle that we find here in this passage.
3. Since I’m going to die, I need to consider how I live
Even though we are all going to die, there is still hope. Even though we can’t manage much of life, since, as we’ve seen, God is in control, what we can do is choose how we are going to respond to whatever life brings to us. When Qoheleth writes that the living have hope, it brings to mind two crucial decisions that every person must make. The first is only implied here in this passage. The second is addressed more explicitly.
Two crucial decisions:
• What am I going to do with Jesus?
Even though it is not the focus of most of the book, we will see in his conclusion that Qoheleth does have an eternal perspective, although it is certainly not as well developed as ours. We’ve often discussed the concept of progressive revelation and how all of us, on this side of the cross certainly know a lot more than Qoheleth did.
Because we have the words of Jesus, we know that there is life after death and that every person is either going to spend eternity in a place of everlasting joy in the presence of God or they are going to be in a place of everlasting torment, separated from God. So the hope that Qoheleth writes about in verse 4 must not only deal with our life here on earth, but also with what happens thereafter. The words of Paul confirm that:
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
1 Corinthians 15:19 (NIV)
Our hope for our future beyond the grave rests completely on what we do with God’s Son, Jesus. At the end of His discourse with Nicodemus in John Chapter 3, Jesus summed up that truth with these words:
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.
John 3:36 (NIV)
That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? There are only two options. Either we believe in Jesus and place our trust completely in Him, in which case we can have not only the hope, but the assurance of eternal life. Or if we don’t make that decision to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, we reject his grace and there is no hope, only the assurance of God’s wrath.
If you’ve never made the decision to commit your life to Jesus, we invite you to do that today. And since we want to make sure that you understand exactly what that means, Dana or I would love to talk to you more about that decision. There are a couple of ways that you can let us know if you’d like to pursue that further. Either check the box on the Care Card on the flap of your bulletin that reads “I would like to learn how to begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” and place it in the offering plate or come and talk to Dana or to me after the service.
But there is a second and more prominent issue here in this passage that all of us must address, especially those of us who have already settled this first decision of what am I going to do with Jesus.
• What am I going to do with God’s gifts?
Obviously, it is possible to become obsessed with thinking about death, which is obviously not healthy. But it is my observation that most of us actually go to the opposite extreme – we don’t want to think about death at all. But Qoheleth is pointing out that a healthy consideration of death is actually helpful in helping us live a joyful life here on earth on a day-today basis.
The fact that we are going to die some day and that we can’t either control when that day will come, or even know when it will occur, ought to significantly impact the way we live our lives. In verse 7, Qoheleth returns to his frequent admonition to enjoy food and drink. But his exhortation here is greatly expanded beyond what he has written previously.
In verse 8, he writes that our garments are to be white and our heads anointed with oil. Although there are some spiritual pictures here, we need to guard against over spiritualizing these things. White clothing in Scripture is often a picture of purity, but it is also a picture of celebration. And although the idea of putting oil on the head also has spiritual symbolism, here is merely seems to referring to the practice of people in the dry Middle East climate who would oil on their heads when they were going out in public so that their skin wouldn’t be dry and gaunt looking. By putting on oil they would look their best.
He also exhorts husbands to live joyfully with their wives. Although Qoheleth only addresses that particular relationship, the general principle seems to be that we should enjoy all of our earthly relationships that God has given to us here on earth.
It is only by considering our death that we can truly live. In the movie “Braveheart” William Wallace accurately observed, “Every man dies, not every man truly lives.” Since we know that we are going to die, do we want to spend our lives alone, being bitter and angry or do we want to spend it with family and friends, enjoying a meal together, celebrating with them our remaining days, however many they may be?
I’m going to close this morning with a video clip that I hope will help you to think about some of those questions. This clip combines the Tim McGraw song “Live Like You Were Dying” with some scenes from the movie “The Bucket List”.
If you’ve seen the movie, you know that it is the story of two men who meet in the hospital where they are both being treated for terminal cancer. The character played by Morgan Freeman decides to make a “bucket list” of all the things he would like to do before he “kicks the bucket”. The other character, played by Jack Nicholson, offers to finance a trip where Freeman can participate in the activities on the list, as well as a few others. This movie is without a doubt a great picture of how we need to “live like we were dying.”
[Watch video]
What’s on your “bucket list”?
