Ecclesiastes 6:1-14
There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind:2 a manto whomGod gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that helacks nothing of all that he desires, yet Goddoes not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity;it is a grievous evil.3 If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so thatthe days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’sgood things, and he also has noburial, I say thata stillborn child is better off than he.4 For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered.5 Moreover, it has notseen the sun or known anything, yet it findsrest rather than he.6 Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoyno good—do not all go to the one place? 7 All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.[c]8 For what advantage has the wise manover the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living?9 Betteris the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also isvanity and a striving after wind. 10 Whatever has come to be hasalready been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able todispute with one stronger than he.11 The more words, the more vanity, and what is the advantage to man?12 For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of hisvainlife, which he passes likea shadow? For who can tell man what will beafter him under the sun?
We are all familiar with the adage, don’t judge a book by its cover and Solomon is saying never get confused about the true state of other’s affairs by looking merely at their outward welfare.
Solomon says prosperity is not always a good thing and it is more than naïve, it is wrong to conclude that riches are always good and being poor, or having little is always a curse. It is not always that way. If you have seen those studies that follow the lottery winners around after they hit it big this is illustrated profoundly. More often than not, their lives are a ruin. For you to wish to win the lottery is, in as much as wishing for the destruction of your soul.
“We cannot necessarily tell God’s disposition toward a man through his outward condition.” (DW) The Lord may often give people material blessings and great amounts, but NOT give them the spiritual taste buds to enjoy, truly enjoy what they have been given. One author painted the picture of a man without taste buds who can afford the finest restaurants and the finest chefs in the world, but they only need to fix him gray, cold oatmeal, what difference does it make? Or we see an impotent man married to a beautiful woman. The wise would do well to guard their hearts and to refuse to envy a bed where nothing happens.
The people most often envied are frequently the most miserable, discontented people on the face of the earth. It would be better for them to have never been born, at least that is what Solomon is telling us here. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this scenario. Everyone envies the guy who gets the beautiful woman, or the woman who lands Mr. Perfect and everyone thinks he or she is so “lucky” wow what a catch. But if they only knew, if they only understood that their judgments according to sight are so far from the truth that she is cold and unresponsive; he is a jerk and has crushed her spirit.
In verse 3 Solomon thinks even of the begetting of children. There is this guy who has a whole ton of kids, and he lives many, many years and everyone thinks this is such a blessing, after all the Bible says that children are a blessing. But is it? The Bible does not say that having children are a blessing. If a man has three children who do not walk with the Lord, who are not raised faithfully, will he be more blessed to have 10 that do not walk with the Lord? No, in fact, it only increases his misery and heart-ache.
Children who throw off the yoke of Christ, and walk away from the church are not a blessing, but in fact are called by God, a curse. Children who continue to be an embarrassment to the Lord by calling themselves Christians but living just like the world, are not a blessing. Cain was not a blessing, neither was Esau, Hophni, Phinehas and Absalom. They brought grief and harm to the parents and even beyond to their families.
“A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the grief of his mother.”
“A foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to her who bore him.”
“A foolish son is the ruin of his father.” So says Solomon.
Solomon wants us to see, and is repeating himself to be sure, at least in principle but it must be pounded into our thick heads, that apart from the grace of God, apart from a correct understanding of life, we CANNOT enjoy, truly enjoy, nor even understand, anything under the sun. What a man is, he says in verse 10, what a man is has already been named. “A man’s arms are too short to box with God. Apart from the gift of God, the more a man struggles with his condition the more the vanity increases.”
There is nothing better than to have the sight that the bible affords us. God our Father wants us to know the way things are, but if we continue to listen to other voices, to those promises that are easier and provide more simple solutions, then we will find ourselves frustrated, without joy and without hope. We have to look to the unseen to make any sense of life. When we see what Ecclesiastes is setting before us, when we see things through the perspective of God’s kingdom, then and only then can we enjoy, have peace, be occupied with joy and we can have and do this, regardless of the circumstances, because the circumstances do not tell the whole story.
Let me begin wrapping this up with some practical points. First, why is this issue necessary for us to take up? Why do we need to be warned against looking only at the externals? Well, the answer is simple, because that is the way we are bent, that is what we WANT to do, it helps us to think we are in control, that the world, and even God comes to us on OUR terms. We look at it all, we organize it, we give all that see, meaning, and wallah, we are god.
Second, we want to be prosperous and successful and so we look around at what we see and determine that this is what prosperous and successful looks like. Listen to this author and this is especially daunting for your children, this is what they are being sold and because parents and grandparents refuse to see beyond the seen, our children are being hemorrhaged into the world at an alarming rate.
“When you want to dance with the girl at the heart of the American party, the first order of business is to make sure you stop looking like the biggest sore thumb in the house. It is then that Pragmatism slides up next to you and whispers; ‘No one is going to hang out with you if you dress funny, talk like a fool and dance to your own beat. I am Prosperity’s brother, trust me, I know. Listen, if you want to dance with Prosperity they you must wear what the world wears, talk like the world talks, and do what the world does.’”
And so, judgments are made, by what is seen…no thought to eternity…no thought to the world unseen…no thought to faith and holiness.
Third, Jesus said that people hide themselves from themselves by hypocrisy, and hypocrisy grows a stress on the outward appearance. In other words, if you want to be a self-righteous hypocrite, or raise your children to be self-righteous hypocrites, then emphasize the external only. As I mentioned, this is our bent and all you have to do is look around and listen to all the self-righteous moral zealots in our land to see just how ridiculous this can all become.
The prophets dealt with the same problem. They accused the people of immorality, but the people replied that, to the contrary, they were very moral and they had the evidence to prove it. They went to church, they offered sacrifices, they gave to the temple, they said their prayers, and so on. And so, the Lord went after them, He always goes after us. What we do with that is another issue. No, he says, you can be very religious and still be immoral. You can be forever talking about right and wrong and be deeply wicked. Indeed, you can make a career of moral crusading and completely fail to do the will of God. Men will think in moral, external terms because that is their nature. But only those who love God and His will are actually good men!
And so today. Christians who proclaim the law of God and salvation by Christ alone are condemned as narrow, bigoted, and judgmental. It is one moral judgment against another. Hugh Hefner condemned the democratic party as narrow minded and judgmental for canceling a fundraiser that was to be held at his Playboy mansion. And we read of municipalities and large corporations that are cutting their funding of the Boy Scouts because they discriminate against homosexuals.
People who take a very casual view of pornography or tax evasion or divorce or promiscuous sex or the mockery of God and religion, can be fiercely zealous in their condemnation of sexism, racism, and air pollution (especially when caused by cigarette smoke). They concern themselves with discrimination to the nth degree, but utterly fail to respect God’s law regarding purity and holiness. They tithe their mint, dill, and cumin, when it comes to having respect for all men, but utterly fail to do justice to the truth that was revealed to man in Jesus Christ.
In a famous case, particularly well-known to Northwesterners, a prominent US senator was accused in 1992 of sexual harassment by sixteen different women who had worked for him. The senator’s response was so revealing of the true state of human hearts. First he denied the charges outright. Then he attacked the credibility of his accusers. Precisely the first two steps the Jews took against Jesus: denial and then the charge that Jesus was demon-possessed. Next, when it became clear that he could not evade his guilt, the senator issued an apology. Faced with charges that he had been doing this for years, kissing and groping female staff members, he declared that he never intended “to make anyone feel uncomfortable.” What is more, he told the media, he intended to seek professional counseling to determine if his behavior had been the result of his use of alcohol. As one Christian observer wrote, “Here is an apology of major, almost metaphysical, elusiveness. According to the senator, nothing happened, but in any case he meant no harm by it, and, regardless, he might have been loaded at the time and so missed the significance of the nonevent in question. …” [Plantinga, 102]
Sin makes you stupid. And that is where we end up, that is where we all end up, in the absurd, embracing the stupid, because we cannot see, will not see, above the sun.
Solomon would ask you: What are your ambitions? How do you make your judgments, even about your own life? Everyone has desires for things. A little boy wants to be a cowboy or a firefighter. An adult man wants this job or this promotion or this home. But at the last there are only two ambitions, all the rest is but a variation on a theme. There is the desire to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness and there is the ambition to seek this world and its rewards. Search your hearts. What do you want? Is it to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ in every way? Is it to live a holy life to the praise of your God and Savior? Is it to demonstrate in various important ways that Christ is your Lord and Master and you love it that he is? Is it to have a powerful, persuasive witness to the unsaved? Is it to be a faithful churchman, serving the church because it is the apple of Christ’s eye? Is it to be a man or woman of prayer? Is it to be a loving husband, father, friend, whose attitude and conduct adorn the gospel of Jesus Christ? Is it to live a warrior’s life, to live by faith in Christ a life of victory over the very temptations that the people of this world find impossible to resist? Is it to be a person whose daily life is characterized by the love that God has poured out in your heart?
Is that what you want? Well, you will never have those things if your eyes are not set above this world. In fact, you may tell the Lord, tell yourself, this day, that those are the things you want, but they require a living faith…they require living BY faith and not by sight…they require a mind that puts to death the thinking and feeling of this world…
They require that we take the Bible seriously when it says, “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God…set your minds on things above, not on things that are on earth.”
Prayer: Gracious Father, with all that is within me, I want my desires and pursuits to be filled with Christ Jesus as my end and goal. However, I am weak and my heart and mind so easily turn to counterfeits and those promises of the world that lead me to bondage. How can I be so foolish! Forgive me and give my holy aspirations only that I might find the joy that only Christ can bring, to the glory of my God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in Jesus name, Amen.
Song: Our Great God