Ecclesiastes Part 5: The Meaning of Life: Injustice, Death, Are you an animal?...and... Who is this Jesus?

 

Ecclesiastes: The Meaning of Life: Part 5

Injustice, Death, Are you an animal?...and... Who is this Jesus?

Ecclesiastes 3:16-22

16 Furthermore, I have seen under the sun that in the place of justice there is wickedness and in the place of righteousness there is wickedness. 17 I said to myself, “God will judge the righteous and the wicked,” for a time for every matter and for every deed is there. 18 I said to myself regarding the sons of mankind, “God is testing them in order for them to see that they are as animals, they to themselves.” 19 For the fate of the sons of mankind and the fate of animals is the same. As one dies, so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath, and there is no advantage for mankind over animals, for all is futility. 20 All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust. 21 Who knows that the spirit of the sons of mankind ascends upward and the spirit of the animal descends downward to the earth? 22 I have seen that nothing is better than when a person is happy in his activities, for that is his lot. For who will bring him to see what will occur after him?

Introduction:

I don’t know how many of you were here for the previous installment of our Ecclesiastes series but if you were and you found yourself stunned by the sovereignty of God last time, then mission accomplished…

To stare into the absolute sovereignty of God in chapter 3 and see that God creates everything in His time… you stare that in the face and it is a blinding and awesome experience.  If it doesn’t blow your mind at some level and upset your categories about God then you’ve probably watered it down and aren’t looking at what the bible actually says.  Now, because this section starts with “furthermore,” Let’s go back and look at verse 14:  “Whatever God does endures forever, nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it.  God has done it, so that people fear before Him.”

So, if at the end of the day you retreat into a comfortable place, a logical place because you are in charge and God is tame and you don’t like where scripture goes, Solomon is telling you God is in charge of Everything and I mean Everything on planet earth, and somehow we do still make real choices, and somehow God will bend everything, whichever way we choose,  to His Sovereign, Good, and Perfect Will.  Now, this is baffling and if you aren’t baffled then you need to wrestle with this longer because you can’t water this down because this is what the Bible teaches about God.

Under the Sun:

The problem is, and I’ve pointed this out in the previous installments of this series, the problem is that we live “under the sun” or I’ve likened it to being “under the loom”  where we see the tapestry of time and space from underneath looking up and it’s random threads from below but from above it’s beautiful.  So from underneath we see injustice, wickedness, sickness, and death and it’s hard for us to see that God is wonderful and good and totally sovereign and in control.  So Solomon says, ok, God is Soveriegn but I can’t deny reality and I see that life is hard and it’s full of toil and I want to really dive into this and I have three objections, and I’m only going to get to one of them today, so you’ll have to stay tuned for the next installment of the Ecclesiastes series for the rest.  

Now I love the way Solomon is, because sometimes he can see above the loom for a moment and he sees the beauty and he understands but other times he is under it and sees the confusion and the randomness, and I think if we are honest with ourselves then we are like that too, we don’t always see perfectly with the eyes of faith and neither did he.  So the first objection, If God is Sovereign then why is there so much injustice in the world.

Justice

16 Furthermore, I have seen under the sun that in the place of justice there is wickedness and in the place of righteousness there is wickedness. 

Solomon is having a hard time believing that God is Sovereign because when he looks around at the institutions that are meant to promote goodness and righteousness, they are corrupt and they are unjust.  This is so relevant right now, it is no secret that we live in a wicked world.  Now whether you are a believer or not you know that there is something wrong with the world.  Why do you lock your door at night?  Why do you lock your car doors? Why are there police patrolling the streets? Why do we have laws?  Why do we have a national defense?  Why do we have all these institutions that are meant to restrain bad behaviour?  Everybody looks around and sees that there are institutions in the world that are there to restrain evil… but we see that they are only as good as the heart of the person calling the shots… and if their heart is not aligned with Jesus then we’re all jacked!  It means our institutions are destined to fail.  Everybody in this room and in this world is a black-hearted sinner in need of Grace.  Every institution in this world is being run by a SINNER!  It’s everywhere, it’s pervasive.  So Solomon looks at the courts where there is supposed to be justice and he finds wickedness.

Now, the US courts, I don’t know if you know this, but our system of justice in America was based on and passed down from the Old Testament, now does anyone want to argue that our system of justice is always just?  Or are there times when the guilty go free and the innocent are condemned… of course because it’s flawed, it’s not perfect!

Are there laws on the books that are unjust?  Are there decisions in the courts that are unjust?  I’ll give you an example, in most states, perhaps all of them, if you shoot and kill a pregnant woman and the baby inside her dies as well then you are charged for two homicides, but in most of the same states, if you go to a doctor and have the baby cut up and removed then that’s fine.  Now, tell me that that makes sense and is just!  It isn’t even logical let alone just!  It is EVIL!  We have a corrupted system.

Now, justice is an interesting thing, we love it and we hate it.  If someone sins against you then you love justice, but if I’m the perpetrator, I don’t want justice, I want mercy.  So Solomon looks around and he sees this, and it maddens him, he says I saw and I began to meditate on it. 

1) The Sovereignty of God in Justice

He said, 

17 I said to myself, “God will judge the righteous and the wicked,” for a time for every matter and for every deed is there. 

So what he’s doing is he is going to give us a couple reasons why God allows injustice in the world. 
1) God is allowing it because we’re not the ultimate judges, you understand, judgment day is coming, every injustice will finally be put to rights, He may not deal with it right now but someday He will, every single act of sin, unrighteousness, and oppression will be dealt with in His time, he will even make injustice beautiful bending it to His Sovereign Will.

When mankind tries to get rid of injustice, it’s not beautiful, it’s horribly horribly ugly, you see we have a tendency to overdo it, Jesus tells about this in the parable of the wheat and the tares, the guy comes to the landowner and says Hey somebody came in the night and tossed out a bunch of weeds in the field how about I go out and pull up all the weeds and the landowner, who represents God in this parable, says No no no don’t do that, because if you do you’re gonna make a mess of things, your going to pluck up the wheat with the weeds, which is what we would do, but God is saying just wait, I’ll get it done and it will be beautiful in my time.  So that means that right now, we live in an age of Grace.  We don’t live in an age of judgement right now, we live in an age of Grace, giving every opportunity for us to come to Him, that’s the Good News!  God is being patient toward you not wanting anyone to perish but all to have eternal life.  But when that age ends, judgement will come.

You see WE want justice NOW and HE wants justice in the END.  And when that justice comes you have two options, either your sins and my sins will already be dealt with by Jesus on the cross where you say I look to that and you say He took my sin and He nailed it to the cross and you rest in that and you believe in that and He says enter into your rest.  

OR

I’m going to pay for my sin and I’m going to pay for it eternally because I cannot repay the wickedness of my sin against a Holy God because you cannot, you have no ability, that’s why God sent His son to die for you.  So that by believing in Him you might not perish but have eternal life.

So Solomon is giving a warning to those that would be unjust, that there is going to be a judgment day, but he also gives us comfort in that judgement will come one day and all will be judged in the end.

2) God is testing them to see that they are as animals

So that was the first reason why God allows injustice in the world, and here is the second reason.

18 I said to myself regarding the sons of mankind, “God is testing them in order for them to see that they are as animals, they to themselves.”

“To see that they are animals” He is testing people and He’s trying to show them that they are no better than beasts or animals and what is an animal it is a thing that operates on nothing more than instinct and it obeys its impulses and it gives into every thing that it wants to do  it’s own way because in a beast there is no virtue of self-control.  If a lion wants a mate and it’s mating season then he mates, he doesn’t look around and ask if that lioness is married to anyone else.  He doesn’t ask her father for his blessing.  If he wants to kill an antelope that crosses his path he doesn’t look at the antelope and say oh that would be gluttonous, he pounces and rips it apart and eats it and we applaud the lion.  It’s doing what a beast should do.  It’s following it’s beastly instinct.  

So Solomon is saying, God is allowing men and women to sink to that level to simply become like creatures of instinct and to respond to every impulse, if I want to eat it, I eat it, if I want to look at it, I look at it, if I want to do it, I do it and nobody tells me what to do.  So God says, I will let you see, I’ll let you go into the depth of that sin and be like an animal in the hope that you’ll be terrified by what you see in your own heart.

I don’t know anyone who thinks that there is no difference between a human being and say a pig, right, I think that we all know and can see with our eyes, and understand that there is a real difference between being human and being bacon.  Or what about a wild boar type of pig.  But, when we are separated from God, it’s as if there is no difference.  We run in vicious packs… in elementary school… that would kill and destroy the other packs.  We want any group against us to die… so that we can live the way WE want to live… If you have been observant in your own heart then surely there have been times when you look inside and say WOAH, where did that come from where the black nasty animal instinct and impulse in your heart, that if I let this thing out it would go nuts and some of you have done that and are dealing with shame or regret, which is not an animal behavior, think about that.

What do you want to argue that animals and people are all the same?  The truth is we are not the same as the animals, and it is a lie from the pit of Hell to think that we are and the problem is, that without God, there are many similarities between us and the animals and it can start to look like the truth.  Here’s what Solomon says, remember, this is “under the sun” meaning without God in the picture. Starting in verse 19

19 For the fate of the sons of mankind and the fate of animals is the same. As one dies, so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath, and there is no advantage for mankind over animals, for all is futility. 20 All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust. 

Dust to dust and ashes to ashes like we hear at so many funerals and so even though humans and animals are different they share this common bond that when both die both decompose.  Now Solomon is talking about death again.  We talked alot about death last time and we’re talking about death again and you might say to me “boy Solomon talks about death too much, but I would say to you, perhaps we don’t talk about or think about or meditate about death nearly enough.”

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards, who was probably one of the greatest theological minds that America has ever produced wrote 70 resolutions that he was determined to live by, this crazy, brilliant, disciplined man who was curious beyond belief in everything, science, mathematics, everything, 

Listen to Resolution number 9 he says “resolved to think much on All Occasions of my own dying and the common circumstances which attend death.”

so maybe we should be talking more about death,  maybe we should think about death more than we do, Solomon looks at people, he looks at animals and he goes:  hey they both die, but I'm just looking at things with my natural eyes.  Both an animal and a man stop breathing. 

They both end up as dust, you put a body in the ground, eventually the ground wins.

So, I have a cat named Fred, and by every standard of comparison, my life is better than Fred’s, she can only eat cat food and I can have all sorts of things, she has to sleep locked in the basement and if my wife did that to me it would be abuse.  She can’t have fulfilling discussions or go anywhere in the world or read or write or arithmetic or sing or dance or help people.  Her life stinks in comparison to mine, but Solomon goes ok, but you’ll both die!  You’ll both decompose and so from a purely logical atheistic humanistic perspective under the loom  just looking up at the threads I see the thread of death for men and animals and they’re both the same!  So without God in the picture, in the long run, there is no ultimate advantage to being human because DEAD is DEAD.  Just makes sense, it’s perfectly logical, everybody dies, no one escapes it.  You can’t beat death.  Death always wins so that’s the first thing Solomon is saying about people being like animals, and here’s the second, verse 21

21 Who knows that the spirit of the sons of mankind ascends upward and the spirit of the animal descends downward to the earth?

A rhetorical question… he’s saying no one really knows.  Do all dogs go to Heaven like in the movie?  Do all people go to Heaven? Well, from an atheistic perspective perhaps the only thing that would really make logical sense is that all people would go to Hell because they’re already in Hell, being separated from God for eternity… but nobody ever voices that… nobody apart from God KNOWS what happens differently to the spirits of animals and people when they die.

The Apostle Paul and Death is the Enemy

Paul in first Corinthians says for this reason that death is an enemy.  It separates us!  I can’t pick up the phone and call my mom!  Death separates us and for some people that separation will be forever… not just temporary.  Death is an intruder an enemy and it brings anger, confusion, despair, sadness…

But, here’s the problem with what Solomon is saying.  There’s someone that Solomon can’t see.  That’s Jesus.  Because if you know Jesus… you will never die.  Never… John 8:51  “Truly truly I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

Now, the Pharisees misquote him and say taste death and He doesn’t even correct them, yeah, truly truly not falsely falsely if you are in Christ, if you have loved ones who died as followers of Jesus, they are not dead, so if we are Christians and we don’t die and we have loved ones who are Christians and they don’t die, what do you mean?

Well, John 11:25-26: Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live and everyone who lives and believes shall never die.”

Did you hear what Jesus just said? Though he die, he shall never die… 

Yes, Lazarus’ body was in the grave, but he was not dead.  His body was dead but he was not dead, he had not died, our bodies die, we don’t.  For those who are in Christ we pass from death into life, eternal life, unbroken, unending life, our fellowship with God began the day that Jesus saved us and from that time forward it NEVER ends.

So Solomon says, we all die, we are just like animals, there’s no difference. And Jesus would look at Solomon and say, “One greater than Solomon is here.” and he says you will never see death if you follow me and if he says that then you can bank on it.  God has spoken and His word never fails.

Notice that all of Solomon’s stuff here is apart from God.  This gives you a perspective on what it means to be apart from God so that you can look at what God has done and is doing in your life and say, I have a renewed mind, I have a new life, I am not the animal that maybe I once was just following my instincts, I have been made new in Christ Jesus.

The Under the Sun Conclusion

Now, here’s how Solomon ends

22 I have seen that nothing is better than when a person is happy in his activities, for that is his lot. For who will bring him to see what will occur after him?

See, this if you are “under the sun” and we are just animals, then this is how it ends, eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.  Because we die and nothing happens after that.  Now, Paul picks up on this in 1 Corinthians 15and says if the resurrection didn’t happen, if Jesus didn’t defeat death, then Solomon is right and we die and nothing happens after that, but the resurrection is true.

Now listen, if you’re here and you don’t believe in Jesus, here’s what I would say to you.  It all comes down to the resurrection.  If the resurrection isn’t true then you shouldn’t believe in one word of it.  I shouldn’t.  But, if it is true, then you can’t pick and choose what you’ll believe and not believe.  If the resurrection is true you have to believe every word He said, and He said, I am the resurrection and the life he who believes in me though he were dead yet shall he live.

This is not just eat, drink and be merry, seize the day, and no one can tell us what is on the other side.  JESUS has been there, He knows, He can tell us, There’s life!

Christian Conclusion

So is the answer just to enjoy your work and ignore the world?

Well when I read the bible through Spirit-Filled New Testament eyes, I realize that I live in a broken, fallen, sinful world where true justice and righteousness will never be achieved outside of Christ but I don’t need to despair and neither do you.  God is in control and will someday set it right, as I live in a world that is becoming less and less human and more and more animal i'm not despondent, God is trying to wake us up and get our attention and I don’t need to fear death.  Death, Jesus has prepared a place for me.  The World is not my home.  And what THAT means is that I can spend my life in radical self-giving sacrifice just like Jesus, all for the sake of His Kingdom, because He has gone before me and death will not take me, so whatever happens to me, I look to Jesus.  

Solomon got it partly right, he just couldn’t see over the loom and see, oh, there is one that can see the other side, and his name is Jesus.