Sermon Discussion Questions:
1. Read Ecclesiastes 9:1-6. What questions do you have?
2. What is the interpretive "rule of the road" to understand the book of Ecclesiastes?
3. What benefit is it to have a book of the Bible written from the perspective of "under the sun"?
4. How can we reconcile God's sovereignty with the presence of evil? What does this teaching from Ecclesiastes offer us?
5. How does the incarnation help when we are overwhelmed with pain and evil?
6. Why is it good for you to know that you will die?
“At 9:40 on the morning of November 1, 1755, Lisbon was struck by an earthquake. It was All Saints’ Day, and the churches of Lisbon were filled with worshipers. Thirty churches were destroyed. Within six minutes 15,000 people died. Survivors ran down to the waterfront and got on ships in the harbor to escape the aftershocks, only to be hit by three tsunami waves that then swept over the city. Thousands more died. Lamps, candles, and cooking fires were upset in homes all over the city and started uncontrollable fires that burned for days. More people died. Within a week 30,000 people were dead, and one of Europe’s great cities lay in ruins.” (Ray Ortlund, PTC: Isaiah 66:1-24).
The French philosopher, Voltaire, was not an atheist—but he did reject all forms of organized religion. He believed that there was a God who created us, but remained infinitely remote and inaccessible to us. When Voltaire heard of the earthquake, he wrote a moving poem to be included at the beginning of his book, Candide, which is a light-hearted satire. The poem was not. The poem took aim at two popular thinkers of the day: the optimism of the English poet, Alexander Pope, who wrote: “What is, is right.” Pope argued that when we find something in life that we don’t like, that we disagree with—we must submit to it as the inflexible will of God. And the German scholar, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who argued that since God is all-powerful and all-knowing, we live in the best of all possible worlds—the presence of evil is permitted by God to achieve a greater good in the end. And Voltaire fundamentally rejects these ideas, not by argument, but by evidence: look at Lisbon.
Unhappy mortals! Dark and mourning earth! Affrighted gathering of human kind! Eternal lingering of useless pain! Come, ye philosophers, who cry, "All's well," And contemplate this ruin of a world.
Isn’t it painfully obvious that this world is far from right? Painfully obvious that this isn’t the way things should be? Maybe you are here today and have harbored reservations or doubt about God because of evil you have seen in the world, or in your own life, and have struggled to find a satisfactory explanation of it. Does the Bible have anything to say to us about this problem?
It does. And it does in a multi-faceted way. There are parts of the Bible that answer Voltaire with argument—if you boil down Voltaire’s accusation, it is basically: I can see no good reason for why a loving, all-powerful God would permit this to happen, therefore, that God must not exist. But, that’s a flawed argument. Just because I can not see a good reason for why something happens, it does not follow that no good reason exists—it is only a statement of my own ignorance. And the Bible does tell us rather directly that God does have good, wise designs behind every act—even if we fail to see them (Rom 8:28). But that isn’t the only way, or even the primary way the Bible responds to the challenge of the problem of evil. The Bible wants to show you that God is good, loving, and wise by lamenting the sad state of the world—its sin, pain, and death; and also by pointing to the many good and wonderful gifts that God has given.
Turn with me to page 557 in the pew Bible as we read from Ecclesiastes 9:1-12:
1 But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. 2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. 4 But he who is joined with all the living has 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 Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.
7 Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. 8 Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. 9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. 12 For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.
- Eccl 9:1-12
To the skeptic who questions how a good God could permit a world like this, this passage gives us two replies: one is to agree with the problem, the other is to point to the good things God has given. We will focus on the problem this week, and look at the good (vs. 7-10) next week.
The unknown, the certain, and the random.
The Unknown (1)
“1 But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God.” (Eccl 9:1a)
Like an expert researcher, the Preacher has diligently studied life and brings us his findings. He presents before us two exemplar characters—the righteous and the wise—and then invites us to consider the outcome of their life: their deeds are in the hand of God. Well, surely, if their deeds are being weighed by God—and they are righteous and wise—we should know the outcome for certain, shouldn’t we? They should be blessed, right?
Wrong.
“Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him,” (Eccl 9:1b)
What does that mean? Here is what we expected the Preacher to say: “The righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. They receive the blessings from God, while the wicked receive judgment.” That makes sense to us. But the Preacher pokes us in the eye by saying: we have no idea what God will give us—it could be good, could be evil. What does that mean?
We need to remember that throughout Ecclesiastes, the author shifts between two different perspectives: at times, the author uses the eyes of faith and tells us what he knows to be true, despite what he sees under the sun. For instance, repeatedly he tells us that he sees gross injustice and the wicked prospering (8:14), yet he told us back in chapter eight that he knows that that those who fear God will be rewarded, and the wicked will be judged (8:12-13). “Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God.” How does he know that? Not by the eyes of experience, but the eyes of faith—he looks beyond his “under the sun” perspective to God’s eternal character and judgment.
But there are other times where he limits himself to describe only what his eyes see, his perspective of life “under the sun.” Here, the Preacher speaks candidly about the tragedy of the human dilemma, marked by our own ignorance, mortality, and limitations. This doesn’t mean that at times he is speaking truth, and at other times lies in the book—it just means his perspective shifts. If you have to undergo open heart surgery, there are two ways you can describe it: you can talk about how through the marvel of modern medicine, what normally would be a death sentence for your forbearers, was fixed and you were healed. Or, you can talk about the experience of being wheeled into the operating room, seeing the scalpels and surgeon and the terror of the unknown outcome. Both are telling the truth, but just from two different perspectives.
This is how he speaks now about the outcome of God’s providence towards mankind. We know, with faith, that God watches out for His children, that He sends everything that they need, and withholds nothing good from them. But that doesn’t mean that we always know what God sends, nor does it mean that God is limited to send to us what we define as “good.” He may send us something that seems, at face value, like the opposite of good, the opposite of love—it may feel like “hate” or “evil.”
When a Christian goes through a terrible tragedy, they can and they should remind themselves of promises like Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” But that promise does not mean that God only sends you “good things”, but that He works all things—good and bad—together towards His good purposes. This is why, at times, Romans 8:28 can feel like cold comfort to the suffering Christian. Yes, God can work even this into His plan for my good in the long run, but that doesn’t mean that this doesn’t hurt…nor does it mean He won’t decree some other painful event in my life. How long did it take for Joseph to see the end that God was working in all of his suffering? Sold into slavery by his brothers, wrongfully accused, imprisoned, forgotten. How many years did all of it seem like blind, meaningless suffering? It ended with him being exalted, but it was a dark and winding road to get there. After Job had seen God take so much from him, what certainty did he have about what tomorrow would bring?
Whether it is love or hate, man does not know.
What do we know?
The Certain (2-6)
“It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath.” (Eccl 9:2)
The Preacher swings to the extremes, paints from one end of the spectrum to the other—you can live your entire life devoted to serving other people, or you can live in the prison of self-centeredness…the Preacher says: whoever you are and whatever you have done, the same event will happen to all. What is that? (see Eccl 2:14; 3:19; Ps 49:10)
“This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.” (Eccl 9:3)
What happens to all persons? One, all people—even the righteous—have evil and madness living in their hearts (Eccl 7:20), and, two, all people die. The grave gobbles us all—whether we are God-fearing church people, or whether we have never stepped foot inside of a church.
And before we move on, we should notice that the Preacher tells us: this is an evil thing. It is evil that death is so indiscriminate, so impartial to us. This is one of the surprising answers the Bible gives to the person troubled with the problem of evil. If you ever look at the suffering of the good and bad alike and think: this is evil, then know that the Bible actually shares your judgment. Which tells us that if we are speaking with someone who is rejecting belief in God because of the presence of evil, we need not pretend that the evil and injustice and suffering isn’t there—the Bible itself calls it evil.
How do we reconcile that with the sovereignty of God? Isn’t He the one who determines what happens in this world? Yes, He does. Couldn’t God just snap His fingers and prevent any hurricanes, any earthquakes, terrorist attacks, miscarriages, misguided missiles, divorces from ever happening again? He could. And yet, He doesn’t. Why? On the one hand, the answer is simple and is illustrated by Jesus standing before the city of Jerusalem, weeping: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…How often would I have gathered you to me…but you were not willing! (Matt 23:37). You were not willing. Man uses his will to reject God and pursues his own evil devices, to start wars, to cheat on spouses, to lie, steal, and kill. That is the story of mankind, from Adam and Eve down to today. But, this doesn’t provide the solution you think it is going to. First, what are we to do with all of the times where the Bible indicates that God can decisively influence or shape one’s will: “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will,” (Prov 21:1; Ezra 6:22; Rom 9:14-18). Second, even if you ignore those passages, if God knew that mankind would use his will to such destructive purposes, why did He create us? If God knew that Hitler was going to do what he was going to do, why create him?
Now, you can chase that down into some really fascinating theological and philosophical conversations, but all of those conversations still end with this ultimate tension: God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, and is in control of the world…and that same God looks down upon the world He has made and governs and…laments the evil of this world and is using all of His power and wisdom to bring that evil to a final end, without ending us.
Did you notice that the verse tells us that there is an evil out there under the sun…but there is also an evil in here, in our hearts. If Ecclesiastes has hammered any point home to us, it has been the limitations on our wisdom to answer every question. The tension between God’s sovereignty and God’s lament over the evil in the world is a mystery that we solve in vain. The secret things of the Lord belong to the Lord, but here is what He has revealed to us: God hates evil, and is coming to bring an end to every ounce of it in the known creation…without destroying us. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ have provided the means by which our evil can be destroyed through the vicarious atonement of our Savior. Which means we too lament the evil in this world, we take comfort in knowing that when we do we are in sync with our God’s own moral estimation, but we also are comforted in knowing that God remains in control of all things and is working to bring about the restoration and healing of all.
Verses 1 scares us with what we do not know, while here the Preacher scares us with what we do know: we all are sinners, and we all are going to die. And the first point boomerangs back on this second to make it even more terrifying: we don’t know when that is! The New Testament analog to this teaching is found in the book of James:
“13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.” - James 4:13-16
If the Lord wills, we will live.
“But he who is joined with all the living has 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 Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.” (Eccl 9:4-6)
What does this mean? It is better to be alive—even if you live modestly—than to be dead—even if in death you were bold as a lion—because if you are alive you know you’re going to die? Why is that good? And what he does he mean that the “dead know nothing” and have no reward? Remember, the Preacher is speaking from the horizontal plane, the perspective “under the sun.” He isn’t speaking about the theological reality of life after death, but what we see when another person dies. You get a clue that he is speaking from this sociological perspective when he includes that “the memory of them is forgotten.” He is describing what death looks like from the outside peering in. What do you observe when you see someone die? Once you die, you don’t do anything else, all your activity, your love and hate and envy, the good and bad of you, cease. Your earthly rewards, your bank account, your accomplishments, don’t matter anymore—if you get awarded something posthumously, you don’t care, you don’t know that you got it, and in time you will be another name on a headstone that people walk by and maybe will wonder about it.
You have no more share in what is done under the sun.
Why is it a benefit that you know you are going to die? We all tend to assume that is a rather gloomy thought, but the Preacher thinks it is a blessing. Here is what you gain from knowing that you will die:
- This will be more of what we explore next week: You take for granted what you assume will always be there. Maybe you ignore your family because you are pursuing something else that seems more fleeting—the window of opportunity at work or in my hobby is so short, I have to throw myself at it! Plus, my wife will always be there, my children will always be there. And then, before you know it, your children have grown up, and you find that you must now wrestle with the consequences of having spent years ignoring your wife. The universal advice older parents give younger parents like myself is: enjoy it now, before you know it, they’ll be gone. You take for granted what you assume will always be there, but what you know is fleeting you treasure. It is the brevity of the brilliance of the sunset, the splashes of red and orange that paint the sky for only a few minutes, that cause you to pause and look. Death is a reminder that our time here is only a few minutes, so to speak. We have one chance to live this life, and we do not when it ends—if the Lord wills, we will live, but we don’t know His will. So let’s not waste our lives devoted to what won’t matter to us on our deathbed.
- It is good to consider your death because it forces you to reckon with what comes after death. What happens when what you have always known and seriously attempted to ignore or avoid, comes? There will be a moment when our time will expire, and we will be called to account. We all must cross to the other side…and what will we find? If you are a skeptical person, consider this wager: if Christianity is false and there is no God, then you will find nothing but the void of non-existence, which is just another way of saying: we do not know. If Christianity is true, then there is a God, to whom you will have to give an account. If Christianity is false, death matters little in its consequences of afterlife. If Christianity is true, then it is of infinite importance. Given those diverging outcomes, it would be wise to consider the claims of Christianity. The Bible teaches that all human beings have been made in the image of God, and therefore we all know that God exists and we ought to live for Him. But we have submerged that knowledge under our desires and have instead pursued what we want—we have disregarded what we know we should do. And for that rebellion we have deserved the sentence of death. And if we persist in that rebellion, God will let us have what we want: eternal death, eternal conscious torment through a life of perpetual rejection of Him, the only source of all that is good and true and beautiful. But God, knowing that no man could ever overcome sin on his own, sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, to obey the Law of God perfectly—as we should—and to die the death our sins deserved—as we should have. And three days later, Jesus rose from the dead and proclaimed victory of death and sin, and now offers eternal life to any and all who will put their trust in Him.
Tormented atoms in a bed of mud, Devoured by death, a mockery of fate.
Death comes to all, death levels all—but Christ has leveled death.
The Random (11-12)
At the closing bookend of our chapter, the Preacher returns to the terror of this apparent randomness:
“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.” (Eccl 9:11)
This doesn’t mean that the race is never to the swift, nor the battle ever to the strong. In fact, we could even say that most of the time, the bread is to the wise, riches are to the intelligent. This isn’t denigrating knowledge or hard-work at all. But it is saying that these virtues are not guarantees. “Time and chance,” or we may call it “luck or fortune” happen to all. Of course, those times and chances are all determined by God—the Preacher isn’t saying that there is no one behind the wheel in heaven and life is aimlessly governed by chance. He is speaking from our limited perspective of ‘under the sun.’ Sometimes, the slacker makes a lucky guess, and he invests early in a company that skyrockets and makes a fortune, and sometimes the frugal, wise, and diligent worker has his life’s savings wiped out.
Wisdom dictates that hard work, knowledge, integrity, and kindness tend to make life more stable and secure. But there are not ironclad laws of the universe that provide mathematical certainty that if you follow the success sequence, you are obligated to a comfortable, satisfactory life. There is always the risk of the unknown. Nor does it mean that because things are going badly in your life, you necessarily did something wrong. We must learn from the error of Job’s friends who thought they could interpret Job’s suffering as proof of Job’s sin.
Do you remember when Jesus talks about two tragedies that befall innocent people: Pilate slaughtered a group of Galilean Jews as they were offering sacrifices, and a tower in Siloam falling and killing eighteen people—one, a tragedy of human evil, the other a tragedy of unforeseen catastrophe. Here is how Jesus interprets those events:
“Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:2-5).
Did these national tragedies happen because the victims were worse sinners than anyone else? Were those who died in the recent hurricanes in the South any worse sinners than anyone else? No, Jesus says. But He doesn’t say “No, they didn’t deserve that.” He says: “Don’t be surprised that they perished, be surprised that you haven’t yet.” Their tragic deaths did not happen because they were exceptionally sinful…no more sinful than you. Which is a terrifying conclusion. If they were worse sinners than anyone else, than that would give us the comfort of knowing that if we avoid an excess of sin, we won’t have those kinds of tragedies happen to us—we can be protected from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But Jesus’ interpretation shows us: tragedies shouldn’t make us assume the victims were any worse than us, it should instead remind us of the final judgment we all shall face as guilty sinners, and the hope of eternal life in Christ.
When the earthquake struck Lisbon, it was of such biblical proportions that some people assumed that there must have been some grave sin taking place there, but Voltaire knew better:
"God is avenged: the wage of sin is death" What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother's breast? Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid? In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.
Do you think these were worse sinners than all others? No. London, Paris, and Madrid…and New York City, and Las Vegas, and the Tri-Cities shouldn’t assume that Lisbon, or Florida, or Palestine, or Ukraine are any worse sinners than the rest of us—rather, we should be reminded that all of us are in God’s hands, we do not know when our time will come, therefore we should be earnest to seek the Lord while He may be found, to repent of our sin and trust in Christ, before we are dragged from this world into the next.
12 For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them,” (Eccl 9:11-12)
We like to think that our life is a course that we can masterfully chart, and like a cruiseliner, can cut through the waves and winds to arrive precisely where we want to go. But that perspective is an illusion! Sometimes, you aren’t on the boat at all—you are one of the fish that is caught in an evil net. Powers beyond your control, limitations that you did not anticipate, and illnesses that you did not foresee catch you, and you are left like a fish, wide-eyed and gasping on the deck.
Here is what Ecclesiastes is telling you: you do not know the future, you do not know what lies behind the veil of providence—the only thing you do know is that death is coming. You are a passenger on a train, headed to a location you did not choose—the grave—and the ride is much shorter than you think. You are not in control, God is.
I’ve shared the story of Jerry Sitsser before, the theology professor from Whitworth who lost his mother, wife, and daughter in one car accident. He writes in his memoir, A Grace Disguised:
“My loss made God seem terrifying and inscrutable. For a long time I saw his sovereignty as a towering cliff in winter—icy, cold, and windswept. I stood in my misery at the base of this cliff and looked up at its forbidding, unscalable wall. I felt overwhelmed, intimidated, and crushed by its hugeness. There was nothing inviting or comforting about it. It loomed over me, completely oblivious to my presence and pain. It defied climbing; it mocked my puniness. I yelled at God to acknowledge my suffering and to take responsibility for it, but all I heard was the lonely echo of my own voice.” (A Grace Disguised)
Maybe, you can resonate with Sittser. But that isn’t the end of his story. He explains that it was through meditating, not only on God’s sovereignty, but on the incarnation that ultimately gave him the ability to love and trust God, not only fear him.
“God’s sovereignty means that God is in ultimate control of everything. The incarnation means that God came into the world as a vulnerable human being…God embraced human experience and lived with all the ambiguities and struggles that characterize life on earth. In the end he became a victim of injustice and hatred, suffered horribly on the cross, and died an ignominious death. The sovereign God came in Jesus Christ to suffer with us and to suffer for us….God is therefore not simply some distant being who controls the world by a mysterious power. God came all the way to us and lived among us. The icy cliff became a pile of sand at our feet.”
