We are in a series called Don’t Waste Your Life. The teacher of Ecclesiastes is examining a variety of areas in life to consider what is the profit or the gain in pursuing what the world says is valuable or important. What benefit do you have if you pursue what the world says will give you happiness? Not only this, but the teacher of Ecclesiastes is also looking at what happens under the sun and considers if it gives lasting joy or satisfaction. In our last lesson we learned that life is a series of seasons that God is ordering together so that our life seasons are beautiful in his time. The challenge is that we cannot see what the next season of life will be nor can we know what God is working in that season. There is nothing we can do to stay in one season of life and there is nothing we can do to change the season of life given to us. At the end of the day, the teacher is showing that putting our hope in this world is foolish and the only sure place to put our hope is in God. As you turn your copies of God’s word to Ecclesiastes 3 we are going to look even deeper as to why putting your hope in this world are futility and vanity. Turn to Ecclesiastes 3:16-22.
Table of Contents
ToggleLife is Not Right (Ecclesiastes 3:16-17; Ecclesiastes 4:1-3)
The teacher turns his attention to justice. He starts considering the courtrooms of the land and he notices some problems. He notices that in the place where there is supposed to be the serving of justice he sees wickedness. In the places where there is supposed to be righteousness was more wickedness. This is a problem that he proclaims now in the book and he will restate this a few times in this book. There is not justice when there is supposed to be justice. The places of justice can be corrupt. The people who are to administer justice can be wicked. Justice is often not served. Now I want us to think about how the teacher is saying this 3000 years ago. Has anything changed? Have things improved? I think it is clear that the answer is no. You can surely look back in your life and see times and situations where it does not seem that justice was served. Worse, you can think of times when the ruling was wickedness rather than righteousness. Now think about how many efforts have been made throughout the years to try to solve this and yet this is still the outcome. Do not forget that the teacher told us that life is crooked and cannot be straightened (cf. Ecclesiastes 1:15). Life is crooked and cannot be fixed no matter who is the king, no matter who we vote for, no matter where we live, and no matter how much we try to change this.
But I want us to think about the emptiness of earthly justice. It is very hard for there to ever be justice in this world. If someone kills someone you love and that perpetrator is caught and put in jail, does that feel like justice? No. Even if the perpetrator is put to death by the state, does that feel like justice? No, because there is nothing that can be done to put this evil to right. There is nothing that can be done to bring that person back. There is nothing makes this right again. Even on a smaller level consider that if someone does wrong against you, there is no way to fix that. It does not matter what the other person does, it is not justice nor does it make things right again. Look at Ecclesiastes 4:1 where the teacher makes this point. The teacher sees the tears of the oppressed and there is no one to comfort them. Power is on the side of the oppressors and there is nothing that the righteous or the innocent can do about it. It is a terrible way the world is. People can struggle with what the teacher is saying in Ecclesiastes 4:2-3. But his point is simple. It is better to have never been born than to be alive and see all the wickedness that is done in this world. Knowing how messed up this world is can be really depressing and discouraging. The more we know about what goes on in the world, the less comfort we can have because there is nothing can be done about all the wickedness and injustice.
This is why the teacher turns his attention to God in verse 17. God is going to have to deal with all these circumstances. Notice again that the teacher is not talking about life without God. Rather, the teacher is showing that we need to hope in God. Only God will judge the righteous and the wicked. But in verse 17 the teacher says that there is an appointed time for every matter and every work to be judged. Life is not right. Life is not fair. We are not wrong to say this. We are not wrong to feel this way. Nothing is new about the fact that justice fails. If you think you need to get justice here under the sun, you are going to be severely disappointment and frustrated. So God tells us in many places in the scriptures that there is a day of judgment (cf. Romans 2:5; 1 Corinthians 4:5; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Hebrews 9:27; 2 Peter 2:9; 3:7; 1 John 4:17; Jude 9). There is a coming day for justice.
Now here is the big question that comes up over and over again. Why doesn’t God do something now? If there is a God and he is right and just, then why doesn’t he do something about it now? If God is just, then he needs to do something now! So the unbeliever concludes that there must not be a God since all that they see is injustice and wickedness. I would point out that you believing that there needs to be justice and equity proves that there is a God. But what is the answer that the teacher gives to this problem? Why doesn’t God do something now to make the world right? Why doesn’t God give constant and consistent justice now? What is God doing?
Why the Emptiness? (Ecclesiastes 3:18-21)
The teacher says that God allows the world to be crooked in this way to teach people something really important. God is showing us something by allowing the emptiness of justice and the lack of comfort to those who are oppressed and hurt. God is showing that people at the end of the day are just like animals (Ecclesiastes 3:18). What does he mean by saying people are like animals? Keep reading by looking at verse 19. What the teacher means is that the outcome for humans and animals is the same. God is teaching us that we are all going to die. God is teaching us that all go to one place (Ecclesiastes 3:20). All come from the dust and to the dust all must return. No matter who you are, no matter what you do, and no matter what you experience, death still comes to each and every one of us. God made a law in Genesis 3:19 in the curse of sin. You are taken from the ground and to the ground you will return. You are supposed to look at your precious pets and when they die you are to realize that this outcome will be your outcome. For as powerful as we are, as smart as we are, as wealthy as we are, and all the other advantages we hold on to, death is the great equalizer. There is nothing that we can do to stop life’s great equalizer. It is amazing to see how many people do not accept this truth. I was recently watching some videos of some notable people who think we are really close to immortality. There are not a lot of promises I can make to you in this life. But I can make this one. God is in control of life and he has determined that all will return to the dust. The point God is making is that you can have all the wealth in the world and you are still going to die. You can be a great world oppressor committing horrible evils and you are still going to die. You can eat certain foods and avoid certain foods and you are still going to die. You can think you are greater than God in all your wisdom and work but you are still going to die. People try so hard to avoid death as if we have the power to avoid what God has decreed. So God has to teach us and one of the ways he teaches us is through the uncertainty and emptiness of this world.
In verse 21 the teacher further notes that we cannot see our outcome. Who knows if the human spirit goes upward and the animal spirit goes down into the earth? When a person dies, you do not know what happened next. You do not know by observation if the death of the human is the same as the death of an animal or is something different happens with the human spirit. At the end of the day, everyone has faith. You either have faith that there is eternity and your spirit goes upward or you have faith that there is not eternity and your spirit goes down into the ground. So what is the conclusion that he wants us to draw from these observations? If God is teaching us that there is no avoiding our appointed time of death and justice before the judgment seat of God, then what are we supposed to learn? What are we supposed to do?
Live with Mortality in View (Ecclesiastes 3:22)
So the teacher draws the conclusion that we need live with enjoyment for the day because we do not know what is going to happen next. You do not know what will happen once you are dead. You do not know what is even going to happen next later today. We want to live our lives with all of these plans, believing that we have the power to carry out every single plan we have. We want to live as if we have so many years ahead of us, not realizing that the very purpose of the world being crooked and not able to be straightened is so that we would understand that we do not have that kind of power or control. Listen to how James taught this critical point.
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”— 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. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:13-17 ESV)
Here is the point: we spend so much time looking forward that we neglect to look at the right now. We spend so much time looking at later today that we fail to consider what is happening right now. When you see terrible things on the news or when you experience oppression and harm in your life, please let it be a moment to reflect that none of us know our appointed time. Let every wicked act be a reminder to us about how we all have the same breath put within us and at any moment we will lose that breath and stand before the Lord. No one knows if tomorrow we will live and do this or that. When you go to sleep, you do not have the power to wake up the next day. So what we need to do is be thankful. We need to be thankful for the day. We need to be thankful for the moment. We need to appreciate what is happening right now because we must not assume we will have this moment again. If we are granted by the Lord to gather with our family and friends for our time of thanksgiving in this country, would you slow down and be thankful for the day itself? Instead of worrying about the food and rushing the day, would you just look around and consider the time that we have been given? We do not know what is going to come after us. We do not know what is going to happen next. But look to right now at our gathering of these disciples and appreciate who is here and what we have with each other right now. It is only by God’s will that we will enjoy whatever happens the rest of this day. It is only by God’s will that we will experience a tomorrow and that we will be able to enjoy it. Make each day that God gives you this week as a day to appreciate the day that your eyes are open. You will live differently for God if you do not live your life thinking that you have tomorrow. What will you do differently with Jesus if you do not have tomorrow? Then go and do that today while you have today because that is how God wants you to live your life.