‘Ecclesiastes’ is a sermon about ultimate
satisfaction, about ultimate meaning in life, about ultimate fulfillment, about
ultimate fullness, about ultimate significance, about ultimate happiness and
ultimate blessedness. This shows us how we tend to read
scripture and how we listen to sermons. It tells us how we listen in general. We tend to engage in selective
listening. We may hear the first thing
and quickly come to conclusions, but we do not necessarily hear the rest, and
in so doing, we come away with a skewed understanding of the actual
message. I am amazed at times, at what
people can come up with after I have preached a sermon! Did I
really say that?
So, is Solomon really cynical about
life? This is what you might think from
reading Solomon’s sermon superficially. In
recent weeks I have spent time
trying to persuade you that the Bible needs careful meditation and prayerful thinking. This is especially true for the book of Ecclesiastes. The
message of Ecclesiastes is not that all is vanity
and a striving after the wind. It certainly expresses those thoughts repeatedly,
but this is not the message of Ecclesiastes, any more than the message
of the book of Jonah is about a big fish
that swallowed a man.
Solomon’s ultimate goal is to show us
that life under the sun ultimately only makes sense when God occupies the
center of our thoughts and actions. This is a very difficult task for fallen
people like us. The fall has had a devastating effect upon us all. The truth is
that we look for happiness and fulfilment everywhere else before we look to
God. So, what Solomon ultimately addresses in his sermon is the
matter of idolatry. The pursuit
of life
for the sake of pleasing oneself
is idolatry, for it substituting
of things for the place that
God should occupy in our heart.
This is vanity and a striving
after the wind, for our idols do not
ultimately satisfy us.
This is what Solomon has shown us, again
and again, in the first 5 chapters. He speaks from personal experience. He tried to pursue the way of wisdom (philosophy) for its own sake, but he found that
this was meaningless. He tried the route of pleasure (hedonism) as a
life style, and it left Him feeling hollow.
He immersed himself in all kinds
of work, and this too proved to be
a dead end.
His conclusion is that none of these
pursuits in themselves can
provide lasting satisfaction. The
bottom-line is that life in this fallen
world, with all its challenges and
perplexities, can only be
meaningfully lived with God at the center. That is the conclusion of
the sermon. The reason why Solomon weaves thoughts of “vanity“ into his sermon is because he wants you to
become dissatisfied with the mere
pursuit of things,
and having become dissatisfied
with the pursuit of things for their own sake, he wants you to
learn to live from the center by
focusing on the happiness in life
which you derive from pursuing
life in all its dimensions through a real fellowship with your Creator.
So, proper perspective is important. Have you understood this? Are you persuaded that
this is the way that you need to think
about your life?
Chapter
6
Chapter 6 is about dissatisfaction.
This chapter builds on the previous
chapter (5:18-20) - the matter of money and possessions. In 5:19
we read, “Everyone also to whom
God has given possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot
and rejoice in his toil – this is the gift
of God”. From this, we had previously traced
a theme in Ecclesiastes, “Enjoy
what you have, when you have it!”[1]
Now, in 6:1,2 we find an enigma (something that defies explanation). “There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil”.
There is a common theme between these two texts. Wealth, possessions and power are given by God, …either to enjoy (5:19) or not to enjoy (6:2). In 2 Chron. 1:12 we read that Solomon was given “wisdom and knowledge … riches, possessions, and honour, such as no kings before him or after him had“.
The one enjoys…
the other fails to enjoy! In Chapter 6
we read that God does not give this man
the power to enjoy his wealth,
possession and honour – in fact, we
read here that a stranger enjoys them.
How are we to understand this?
Wealth,
possessions and power – whether we are enabled to enjoy them or not, are not
necessarily an indication of God’s favour or dis-favour upon us. In certain countries Christians are
economically discriminated against and therefore poor. In other countries
Christians have freedom to become
wealthy and prosperous. Is God not the
God of both? Are the countries in which these Christians live in not in His sovereign
hands?
The ultimate point is that true satisfaction does not come from being rich or not being rich. The ultimate truth is that in actual fact we own nothing. As naked as we come to this earth we shall depart (see 5:15). Stop and think! You own nothing in the end! Therefore our possessions should be viewed as temporary gifts from God. Therefore we need to know that, just as easily as God gives material things, so too God may take it away, and give it to others. His purpose for us in these things is what matters. Wealth is not an ultimate advantage. We cannot say that the rich are more blessed than the poor. That sort of thinking is the curse of the current prosperity cults who have so many churches in their grip. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that wealth may be a great hindrance.James says, “God has chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith…” (Jas 2:5)
Who
knows what God is teaching us through giving and taking away? This is deep
stuff! The great wealth and possessions that my
father’s family possessed in
Germany at the end of the 1800’s and into the 1900’s is no longer our wealth. Two world wars in
Europe have seen to that! There are no
guarantees in life when it comes to
one’s possessions and wealth. And from
our passage we learn that firstly
that a full treasury does not
satisfy. Only God satisfies!
We learn secondly from verses 3-6 that a prosperous family man with a long life is not necessarily a satisfied man. “If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life's good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good—do not all go to the one place?
Did
you see that? Here is a man who has “a
hundred children and lives many years” (v. 3), but he lives a life in which he enjoys neither his
children nor his wealth; worse still, says
Solomon he may not even receive a proper
burial.
The
Bible normally describes a man with many children as a blessed man (e.g. Ps
127:3–5). [2] But here,
Solomon says that a stillborn
child is better off[3]
than this dissatisfied man with a hundred children. A still born
child, he reasons, knows nothing of the frustrations, disappointments, and
enigmas of life under the sun. He reasons that such a child is comparatively
better off than such a man (see this
thought also expressed in 4:2 concerning
the dead who are better off than the living).
How are we to understand this sort of logic?
The
truth is that anyone who makes too much
of possessions, whether it be wealth, or his children, or long life (v.6), BUT who does
not include God in his worldview - he will inevitably be sadly disappointed. He will feel empty, because God is not at the center of his
pursuits.
Vv. 7–9: “All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind.”
This is a repetition of what he has been saying since 6:1 - the key word here is, “no satisfaction”. So, let us repeat this. A person living as a mere human being, merely for their sensual appetites, without God in their life, will never find satisfaction in possessions, wealth, children, or years of life.
V.8 contains two rhetorical questions:
(i) For what advantage has the wise man over the fool?
(ii) And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living?
The answer to both questions is, “there is no advantage“. Being wise and being street wise (as the poor man might be, who knows how to conduct himself before the living) may have temporary advantages. However, without God at the center there is no advantage in being a Plato, a Socrates or an Aristotle or any great philosopher you might care to mention. And there is no advantage being a penniless, streetwise teenager (see also 2:12-17). Having wisdom of any variety or sort in itself is no guarantee for a happy life. But wisdom that delights in God is a wonderful gift ( see Proverbs 2)
V. 9 “Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite”. This proverb is the equivalent of the English Proverb, “a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.” Dreaming about something does not mean that we have it! It is better to be content with what I have than to waste my life desiring what I do not have. It is futility and a striving after the wind. Living in a dream world, allowing one’s senses to rule one’s appetites, without considering the God who has given us these wonderful senses, only leads to profound dissatisfaction.
Let your words be few … (vv. 10–12)
“Whatever
has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he
is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words, the more
vanity, and what is the advantage to man? For who knows what is good for
man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a
shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?”
There is a great danger in life. Very often we think that we are the first one’s who experience such enigma’s and dissatisfactions. You may be tempted to think,“No one has ever experienced my lot!”
Now listen to Solomon: “Whatever has come to be has already been named. “ You are not the first one to whom these things have happened … and don’t argue about that: “… he(you) is (are) not able to dispute with one stronger than he(you).” Don’t see yourself as hard done by. You cannot dispute with God. God is in charge here. He is the one who has set everything in place and who has named everything, including Adam a word that comes from the word for earth[4]. Man is earthly. You are earthly. You are created for God’s glory and purposes. Stop pursuing your dreams and start asking, What has God put into this lump of glorified dust? That puts all mankind in their proper place. So how do I live before this great Being called God? Answer: Eccl. 5:1-3 ; 6:11 Let your words be few.
Conclusion
V. 12
says it all! God “knows what is good for a man during his lifetime.” [Note: Ch
7:1 will begin with what is “good“
]
You
fallen creature do not ultimately know what is good. Your ‘hard disk’ has been corrupted. Trust God to
fix it. With God you are in good
hands. He knows what He is doing. Rest
in Him. Let Him use you just as you are. Stop being dissatisfied with your
lot.
And
so we see that Solomon carefully
demolishes every question, every observation, that we might
be tempted to use in the process
of questioning our Creator’s wisdom.
How then shall we live?
From
Ch. 6 we learn that being content in what we are and
have is more satisfying than wealth or
non- wealth.
We learn that doing God’s will is more important than gaining goods.
In Mark 10:29–30 Jesus speaks clearly concerning this matter. Life’s abundance does not lie in possessions, family, and long life.
God knows what we need on a daily basis (Matt 6:25ff).
May
we learn these lessons well and continue to look up, beyond the sun, to our
Creator.
[1] 2:24-26;
3:12-13; 7: 14; 8:15 ; 9:7-10 ;
11:8,9. We thus
observe a regular pattern of this thought in
Ecclesiastes.
[2] Remember here that Solomon had a numerous offspring
[3] See
also Job 3:16 where Job says that
he would have been better off as a
stillborn child than to have
suffered the loss of all of his children, possessions and health.
[4] ’adamah: see Gen 2:7; 3:19; Eccl 3:20; 12:7
