Let’s read through todays passage - Ecclesiastes 9:1-12. If you were following along in the text, you might have noticed that these passages can be broken down by three areas. The first area deals with the certainty of death. The last section deals with the unpredictability of life. The section that is sandwiched in the middle speaks about the solution to all this. We are to enjoy life. As I go through today’s passage, I would like to address the first section, the third section, and then come back to the second section. We know in today’s passage that Solomon is revisiting this topic that he finds so beneficial; the topic of death. If you were here last week, you know we talked about how Solomon had this view that it is better to spend time in a funeral home, a house of mourning, than a house of feasting and partying. His rationale was that the good would be able to take it to heart because death is the destiny of every person. As I mentioned last week, there are life lessons that can be learned in the house of grief that can’t be learned in a house of pleasure or party. He continues on with this theme of death. This time he is not really talking about the benefits of death. He is talking about the unfairness of death.
He begins in the first passage by reflecting on some of the prior passages that came before in chapter 8. He says “So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits them.” A lot of stuff in here, but the idea is God controls everything. God controls the events. God controls our lives. The sad thing is that Solomon seems to imply that we don’t know whether or not we are dealing with a good God or a bad God. We don’t know if we are dealing with someone who is going to embrace us when we get to heaven or is going to hammer us. Eugene Peterson, who wrote The Message, says it even more clearly. He says “Well, I took all this in and thought it through, inside and out. Here’s what I understood: The good, the wise, and all that they do are in God’s hands – but, day by day, whether it’s love or hate they’re dealing with, they don’t know.” This is Solomon’s view of life under the sun. From that angle of view, it looks kind of weird. We don’t know whether we are dealing with a God of love or a God of hate probably because he doesn’t seem to follow our rules or our pattern of life. We can give a lot of examples even in the book of Ecclesiastes. The one I thought about was the idea that some Christians believe that if all of a sudden they have a windfall of money then that is God showing them favor. Possibly. But what do you do when a drug dealer receives a windfall of money? Is that God’s favor? Some of you might have watched the news and saw how the coastguard intercepted a submarine from Mexico going up to California. In that submarine they found cocaine with a street value of $1.8 million. Now if that went through, I guarantee there would be some people that would profit greatly from the sale. Would we suggest that is God’s favor? Probably not. And also just because you are feeling some sort of pressure in life, you are feeling in a vice, like you are going through some pain or some hard times – like we talked about last week when you develop a timeline the pink stickies represent painful moments – just because you are going through a painful moment doesn’t necessarily mean that you are being punished by God, although sometimes it looks that way from our angle of view. But again all we have to do is revisit the story of Job to know that is not a good way to view life. Job was someone who was a righteous, upright man, and a very blessed man. I think he had ten kids and a bunch of livestock and all sorts of wealth. Satan visited God one day and asked permission to mess with Job. If God would take away all his stuff, he would probably curse God. So God said go for it. The story goes that three of Job’s so-called friends speak to Job several times and suggest that the reason that Job is experiencing such hardship was because God was angry at him. Only to know that at the end of the book, God wasn’t angry. We just don’t know the reason why. Sometimes we just do not know. He didn’t give Job the reason why. Just like he doesn’t always give us the reason why.
Then he goes on and spends the next five verses or so revisiting the mystery of death. The certainty of death while at the same time the unpredictability of life. He goes on to say “All share a common destiny – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.” Those who worship in the temple and those who don’t. That is probably what he may be referring to there. What this passage says is that no one gets out of this earth alive. No one. Not the good or bad, wise or unwise, we are all subject to this thing called death. Death becomes this great equalizer in life. If I was the man upstairs, I would probably change the rules a little bit. You would think that somebody who lived a good moral life and went to church and they gave their offerings and they served then that person should be able to get towards the end of the line. Wouldn’t that be the way you would run the show? But we are not God. We know by experience that that is not the way the show works. We know there are evil, wicked people who live very long lives while, at the same time, innocent, young people leave this life early. Some of you may have seen the news a few weeks ago. There was an elderly man probably in his 90s who was an accountant at a Nazi concentration camp. He was involved in the extinguishing of several thousand Jews. His job was to take all the gold and money and count it up and keep track of it. At 90+ years old, they are finally taking him to trial and they are going to give him four years or something like that. What is sad about it is he got to live a pretty good life. If I was God, I probably would have taken him out a little bit earlier. But that is not the way it happens. Yet we see the many young people that tend to die young for no reason. They didn’t do anything. Innocent lives are suddenly just taken away. I don’t know if some of you saw the news a few weeks ago about a little 9-year-old boy who was a bat boy for a Kansas City minor league baseball team. He was doing exactly the thing he loved to do. He wasn’t paying attention and walked in front of a batter who was practicing his swing and the bat hit him on the back of the head and a few hours later he was dead. You say what is up with that God? I don’t like that God. That is frustrating that you would allow a Nazi to have a good long life but you take this little boy’s life away. Does that frustrate anybody? Do you think about that stuff? If we are honest, it is frustrating.
That is why we can appreciate Solomon because Solomon expresses that frustration. He goes on to say “This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.” There is a lot of stuff in here that I don’t have time to unpack. One thing I think we are sure of is that Solomon is not waving his fist up at God saying you are evil for doing that. He is just frustrated. From man’s angle of view, it looks very evil. It looks like something is not right. The system is messed up. He is suggesting there is some sort of a source behind this evil. There is what I would call a resident evil that exists in the world. Solomon goes on to suggest that that resident evil is in the hearts of men and women. That is what he is saying here. “The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil, and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.” This is one where it is troubling to read. We could say he is talking about a few people. The really bad people. Charles Manson. Or James Holmes, the guy who slaughtered 12 people in a movie theater last year. Solomon is suggesting that all people have this resident evil within. They have the capability to sin. Whether they like it or not, they inherit this, and because of that, that is why we have death. Paul goes on to confirm that in Romans 5:12 when he says “Just as sin entered the world through one man (that one man being Adam), and death through sin, and in this way death came to all man, because all have sinned.” We can join that with 3:23 “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” If you are a Christian, which I assume most of you if you are in church today you are here because you identify to some degree with Christianity. But what does that mean? You identify with what is called the Good News of Jesus Christ. The good news is that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that none of us would perish but have eternal life. So to believe in the good news, you have to believe in the cross. You have to believe that Christ died on the cross for your sins, which also means you have to believe that you are a sinner at heart. That is not comfortable to believe, but it is true. Because of sin, the result is death. Not just physical death but spiritual death, except for those who trust in Christ.
Then he continues on and says given all this, it is still better to be alive than dead. He goes on to say “Anyone who is among the living has hope – even a live dog is better off than a dead lion.” We have to remember here when he is talking about a live dog, he is not talking about a household pet. This is 3,000 years ago. They weren’t pets, they were scavengers. They would roam in the desert to pick up whatever they could find. When he is talking about a lion, he is talking about an animal of honor so much so that there would be worship of lions.
As a side note, I think some of you might have heard the news about Cecil the Lion. Anybody know that story? I am not here to cast judgment either way, trust me on that. But had it not been a lion and it had been a crocodile on the endangered species list or a snake or a hyena, a desert dog, would you be upset about that? Do you think the culture would have been like, oh man, you killed an endangered species of snake? No. It is because it is a lion. A symbol of power. A symbol of honor. People were offended. So much so that somebody wrote on that guy’s garage, the poor dentist, lion killer. This is an aside, but some of you go to my dentist, and I asked him his thought about this. He said if it was an accountant or a car salesman you probably wouldn’t have heard of it, but it was a dentist and so that is why we heard of it. He said they probably would have made a big deal if it was a pastor. All kidding aside, what is really sad about this, and I think some of you may know and I have seen your posts on Facebook and maybe believe, is that we give all this attention to a lion yet Planned Parenthood is selling body parts of aborted babies for profit and barely a squeak comes out. That is a sign of resident evil. That is proof that there is an evil within our culture.
Anyway, he goes on and when he is talking about it is better to be a live dog than a dead lion, he is really trying to say it is better to be poor and alive rather than full of honor but dead. Then he suggests the reason. He says “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished. Never again will they have a part in anything that happens in this earth under the sun.” That is the most realistic but depressing description I think of death around. We are all going to the grave. We are going to go to the grave and then what is going to shortly happen is we have no reward. There is no benefit coming from us from this earth anymore. No benefit whatsoever. No reward. He suggests that soon everybody gets forgotten. Some people have lost loved ones. Some people remember them for years. Other people, especially people that remarry, you think I miss this person, but frankly I don’t think about that person everyday like I used to in the first year. I am just admitting that. That is truthful. Sometimes I might go months without thinking about my first wife Dana. It is just the way it is. Then he says along with the fact that you are buried, all your passions, your ability to love, hate, and to express emotion is gone too. You have no part in anything that goes on under the sun in this world right now. He is blunt. He is speaking truth. So he talks about the certainty of death.
Then going to the other side of things, the third section, there are two verses. He goes on to say “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong; nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” From man’s angle of view this looks like there is a big crapshoot going on upstairs. It doesn’t look right. We would expect that the race would go to the swift. The fastest person should win. But life happens sometimes. People trip up. Anybody remember the name Lolo Jones. Olympian woman hurdler Beijing 2008 I believe. She was considered the fastest woman alive. She tripped on the last hurdle. Came in seventh place. The race doesn’t always go to the swiftest. Some of you have heard of Ben Johnson from the 1988 Olympics in Korea. He was considered the fastest man alive. He got the gold medal. He was stripped of the title because he was accused of injecting himself with illegal steroids. So again the race is not always to the swift. But also the battle is not to the strong. Solomon doesn’t have to jump into the 21st century to come up with examples because he has examples around his time. The easiest example is David and Goliath. I assume everyone has heard of David and Goliath. Goliath was this huge man believed to be as big as 9 feet tall and just mean. He was a Philistine. They were fighting against the Israelites. So Goliath gets out there and harasses the Israelites and says send your best men out on me and I will take care of them. They send shepherd boy David with a slingshot and a few stones. He slings that slingshot and plants a stone in Goliath’s forehead and he falls dead. For those of you who question whether or not the Bible is true, you might have read recently that the city of Gath where Goliath was from was recently uncovered. It is a real city. The battle is not always to the strong. Then he goes on to say “nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned.” This is really just saying smart people don’t always come out on top. We would think they would. If you spent all this on education or all this experience from jobs, you would think you would come out on top but sometimes people starve. They have multiple degrees and they find they can barely carve out a living. I imagine most of you know Superman. Superman was created in 1938. This man is Jerry Siegel and he was the inventor of Superman. You don’t hear much about him because he sold the rights of Superman for $130. Superman was one of the most successful characters in comic book history. Probably billions of dollars. He sold it for $130. He and his wife could barely carve out a living. So much so that the wife showed up at the president of DC Comics who he had sold the rights to and she said “Do you really want to read in the newspaper that the creator of Superman starves to death?” They didn’t want the bad publicity, so they gave him a job as a writer or something making $500 a week. Point being the race is not to the swift; people trip. The battle is not to the strong. Nor food comes to the smart people. You begin to ask why there are all these exceptions. It is a good question and Solomon answers it. Because time and chance happen to them all. This is very hard for Christians to swallow. Solomon is looking at it from man’s angle of view. From man’s angle of view, it does look like chance.
After looking at the first section that deals with the certainty of death and the last section that deals with the unpredictability of life, I think it is the four passages that are sandwiched in the middle that really come up with Solomon’s recommendation given all this stuff. He goes on to say “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.” This is a good passage because it is recognizing what people of faith have believed all along. God is not a vengeful God. God desires to show favor on us. God desires to help us to enjoy the things of his creation. Obviously, Solomon is talking about food and wine, the main commodities of the day. We could add music. I think God likes it when we enjoy good music or go to an art museum or a good movie or engage in some sport activity. Contrary to what some Christians would say, these are seen as gifts from God. We know that Jesus wasn’t afraid to enjoy life. He is facing the cross, but if you read through the early parts of the gospel, you see that Jesus was really enjoying life. His first miracle at the wedding in Canaan was he multiplied the wine. They had more than enough wine. He would be seen at parties with sinners engaging them in the good news of the gospel. I think if he were here today, he would be enjoying life in Pittsburgh. He would be a Pirates fan in the bleachers down at the stadium. He might play a round of golf or play Frisbee in the park. I would suspect that Jesus would agree with Solomon’s words here. Solomon goes on to use a metaphor for enjoyment. He says “Always be clothed in white and always anoint your head with oil.” White clothes in the Middle East were designed to reflect the heat of the sun. The oil was designed to keep the skin from being dry. Really it is a picture of joy. In the Old Testament people who were in a period of grief would put on sack cloth and put ashes on their face to demonstrate the sadness of their life. He is saying don’t do that. Be joyful as you enjoy these gifts. Enjoy life. Then he extends that act of enjoyment over to relationships. Particularly the relationship between the husband and wife. He says “Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun.” You read this passage and think Solomon had like 700 wives. How does he know what he is talking about? He probably really does know what he is talking about, but I think later in life he realized the blessing of having one husband and one wife who are fully committed to each other. His words seem to come from a sense of frustration. Since we have this certainty of death, since we have this unpredictability of life, then all these meaningless days, enjoy it with your wife. There is nothing else to do, so you might as well have fun with your wife. That is basically what it sounds like. He doesn’t have the full picture. As Christians, we don’t enjoy our spouse because we know we are going to die and think this life is meaningless. No. We enjoy our spouse because, when working correctly, a marriage relationship is a picture of Christ’s love for the church. In Ephesians 5:25 Paul writes “Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” It speaks of the sacrificial nature of the relationship between Christ and the church and between husband and wife.
He starts to wind this up and begins to draw on the importance of enjoying your work and having a good work ethic. He says “Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” He is not advocating being a workaholic here. He is just advocating doing your best. Paul alludes to this when he writes in Colossians “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” We don’t work because we know life is short so we are going to try to cram everything in it. We work and we enjoy our work because it becomes an act of worship to God, of service to God. That is why we work. Work in an enjoyable way. Whether you drive a dump truck, a garbage truck, whether you flip hamburgers at McDonald’s or you work at a Starbucks or you are a nuclear physicist or whatever, he says just do your best because you are not working for men. You are working for the Lord.
In conclusion, we can see these words of Solomon that have a real sense of wisdom to them. We can’t deny the truths behind them. The certainty of death. Everybody is going to die. There is no favoritism there. The unpredictability of life. We never know who is going to win that race or battle. We can also agree with the solution. We can also agree that what we should do is “eat our food with gladness and drink your wine with a joyful heart for it is now that God favors what you do.” Solomon is right, but he is not 100% right. It looks like he is trying to suggest that because life is short, we should enjoy our time. It is almost like the pagan philosophy of the epicureans. Eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow you will die. That is how he is coming across. Solomon is suggesting that you enjoy life is born out of frustration rather than faith. It is faith that allows you, Christians, to really enjoy life the way God intended from the very beginning. Because of the crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, he opened the doorway to new life. We don’t enjoy life because we know life is going to be ending and we are trying to cram as much into it. No, we enjoy this life because we know we might be dying, but we know we are going to live for all eternity. I don’t know how strong your faith is, but did you ever think about if you knew and really believed that you were going to live for all eternity how that might affect your life right now? How would it affect your thought life? How might it affect how you engage in different activities? I think if we really believed it, it would cause us to be different knowing that we have eternal life. The story of Martha and Mary when they lost their brother Lazarus. They were concerned he would die and wouldn’t raise from the grave. Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe that?” It is Jesus asking you. That is the most perfect funeral passage because I get to read it and ask do you believe it. Do you believe that your loved one is in heaven? Do you believe it? If you don’t, you really have no business being here because that is what Christians believe. We don’t simply enjoy life because we know the certainty of death and we know the unpredictability of life but because we know we are going to live on for eternity. So we truly can enjoy this life in a very pure and wholesome way. In a way that when we do it well, we begin to get a glimpse, a taste of the life that God intended for us from day one. Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Let us pray.
