Study 3 – Ecclesiastes by Neville Clark.

Study 3 – Ecclesiastes by Neville Clark.

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Study 3 – Ecclesiastes by Neville Clark

We come this evening, brothers and sisters and young people to the next phase in Solomon’s great experiment. You will remember of course that Solomon is on a quest, isn’t he, he is looking for the greatest good, that elusive thing that man must do, in this life that he might achieve lasting satisfaction.

You will remember also a fortnight ago Solomon began to answer that question from the point of view of personal experience. He tried everything, didn’t he, in chapters 1 and 2, wisdom, pleasure, indulgence in fact the first portion of Ch 2:10, tells us that whatsoever my eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy. So here he was experiencing everything he could possibly experience in this life, he built, he planted, didn’t he, he bought and he sold, he married and accumulated wives, presiding over the golden years of Israel’s history, the greatest they would become prior to the kingdom of God, I suppose you would say, as a nation, but in all that, he could find nothing of lasting value, so he concluded in Ch 2:24, after a lifetime of materialism, he concludes that there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour, this he says that it was from the hand of God. That was the only fulfilment Solomon found in all those years, and it was temporary, but at least it was tangible. Wile he was busy, he tells us, he enjoyed himself. He enjoyed being creative, he enjoyed being productive, but of course once the work was accomplished and the novelty wore off, it didn’t last, but at least he says, there was a blessing in the activity itself. A certain God-given blessing in labour, that’s man’s portion, that is Solomon’s portion from Chapter 2.

Well this is where we are up to, brothers and sisters, here was the experience of Ecclesiastes Ch 2, the personal experience that we described that Solomon participated in which netted him the result we found in V 24 and this is where we are for this evening. This is the next experiment, and you’ll notice, this goes from Ch 3:1 all the way through to Ch 6:12, there are four chapters now involved which we are going to consider all of this evening in the second great experiment, which we have entitled here “The Quest pursued by general Observation.” Solomon stops still, he stops now he reflects on all the information that he has gathered across his life. We are going to see a lot of people tonight, a lot of people in all different circumstances, because what Solomon does here is he gives us snapshots of behaviour, of things that happen to people, all masses of people pursuing the same goals, all looking for ultimate satisfaction in life, all doing the very things that Solomon has tried to do himself in a materialistic sense, but has failed.

Now he doesn’t need to go and copy all these people he can watch them, he can watch what they do and what becomes of them, and answer many of these questions just through general observation. You are going to find of course that by the time he gets to the end of Ch 6, not surprisingly, he still hasn’t answered the question. He still hasn’t found this elusive thing he must do in this life, living life as an end in itself, to give himself satisfaction. What he does do of course, is he closes a whole lot more doors, which is his object. He’s got to try everything and eliminate everything that he might find out, really, what could give man ultimate satisfaction, and that is what he is going to do for four chapters here.

Now this particular quest breaks up like this. This is the breakdown of the four chapters. “The quest pursued by general observation.” I will leave this up for this evening so you can know where we are up to. You will see just how the structure unfolds and why Solomon says what he says, when he says it. Ch 3 of course is the key chapter in this section, this is where Solomon almost philosophically lays out the framework of creation, and explains man’s position in creation in relation to the beasts, in relation to time. The limitations that God puts upon him to frustrate him. Solomon begins to explain that, he explains the reasons why man gets frustrated in life.

Ch 4, 5 and 6 are all impositions of vanity, we’ve got vanity imposed by God in Ch 3, the way God has made creation will cause man frustration, it is by design, it is expected, it must be like that as we will see. But man can frustrate himself, quite apart from anything that God might do in creation, by the various things that man can do in his conduct, he can rob himself of any enjoyment in life, himself or his fellows. Similarly, well, he deals almost two chapters, just dealing with riches, and the reason he spends so much time on riches, is because almost universally, it is almost an instinctive, I suppose, answer, inwardly in mankind, that if he wants enjoyment then he has got to stack up money, he’s got to accumulate things. Mankind almost instinctively looks to accumulate things in the first instance to give himself satisfaction, and it sometimes takes a lifetime to realise really that he doesn’t get satisfaction by becoming rich, in fact, I suppose, many people die still really not realising that, but continually chasing this desire and filling this appetite for more and more and more, never realising that they are on a treadmill.

So he spends a lot of time dealing with this and meets a lot of very different people. In the midst of this, of course, at the bottom here, we have the first of our direct exhortations, this is a little section of seven verses, specifically spoken to the ecclesia, those who aren’t of themselves “under the sun” those who he addresses in the second person here, the “thee” and the “thy” of the book of Ecclesiastes. And he addresses certain issues on worship, here we have got worship, prayers and vows, in these seven verses in Ecclesiastes Ch 5.

Now when we turn to Ch 3, we turn I suppose to some of the most intriguing words in scripture and certainly some of the most fundamental words in the book of Ecclesiastes, this is the problem of Time. Back in Ch 1:3, Ecc 1:3, Solomon said, as he introduced the Quest, “What profit hath a man of all his labour that he takes under the sun?” And then he makes the comment in Ch 1:13, that “He gave his heart to seek and searched out by wisdom all these things that are done under heaven this sore travail that God has given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.” So he begins the quest asking what the purpose of life is really, what profit does a man have of his labour, and why is God “exercising” or as it means “humbling” man in Ch 1:13. Well he addresses those issues now when we come to Ch 3, because you will see in Ecc 9:3 a duplicate of what we just read in Ch 1:3, “What profit has he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth” what’s the point he says here, and then in V 10, “I’ve seen the travail that God has given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.” So Solomon as an introduction to the second phase of the quest here is now going to start to explain why life is what it is, why creation is what it is, why man finds himself in the position he does, by design, by the design of God. How even though that might not be pleasant for man that is what God intends.

And so he says in v 1, Ecc 3:1, “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Now let’s define some words, “to everything there is a season.” The “season” here is an ‘appointed occasion’ an ‘appropriate moment’ and “a time” is a ‘set period’ a ‘duration.’ For every purpose “under heaven,” now “under heaven” here is really a synonym for “under the sun” which we read about all the way through the rest of the book of Ecclesiastes. “Under the heaven” and “under the sun” appear to mean the same things. So what we have got then described in the very first verse here, is that every event in life has a start point and a duration, there is a time plan for everything, he says. And for the most part, of course, man can’t control them. Man can’t control when these times occur, he has just got to take life as it comes and make the best of things as he can with all the limitations that life imposes. And now between vv 2 and 8 Solomon lists the 28 “times” that come upon man, 14 pairs of times, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up that which is planted. And he lists this great catalog you see of different times, each with their start point, each with their duration, opposites, which come upon mankind in his life. The first one of course, the time to be born, is the greatest of all, the time to be born, and the time to die, the two, I suppose, pivotal times that mark out man’s life in between which every other time takes place, at the personal level. He concludes the Ch in v 19 by speaking about the time that man dies. So these are the great times now that he discusses here in v 2, the time to be born and the time to die, between which all other times occur.

So we have a life then which began without our control at “a time to be born” and ends at “a time to die.” I suppose we could suicide, but most living creatures, men and animals, do not choose that if they are rational. So the time to be born and the time to die are not in our control at all, but they are the greatest times of our life, in a physical sense, so we are living not really knowing how much time we have got because we don’t know when the time to die is going to come.

Come across to Ch 9:12, he explains something on that. Ecc 9:12. We are living not knowing just how much time we have got, “For man also knows not his time” that is, his time to die, “as the fishes that are taken in an evil net and as the birds that are caught in a snare, so are the sons of man snared in an evil time when it falleth suddenly upon them.” All of a sudden, your numbers up and that’s your time, no matter how many precautions you take tomorrow could be your last day, and you don’t know. If you were running a business you would do everything you could to stop those sorts of things from derailing your business. Yet in the greatest business of life you might have 24 hours and you just don’t know and there is nothing you can do about it.

“Snares, in an evil time when it falls suddenly upon them” he says. And different times are going to wash over us, brothers and sisters, you look at Ch 7:13, all sorts of different times will wash over us between the beginning and end point of our time. Ecc 7:13 he says, “Consider the work of God, for who can make that straight which he has made crooked. In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity, consider. God has set one over against the other to the end that man shall find nothing after him.” Life will be unstable. It will alternate between a time of joyfulness and a time of adversity, good times will come, bad times will come and you will never know just what tomorrow might bring, you will never ever quite know what will be after you, you see. And God does that deliberately. God, he says, has set one over against the other, this is deliberate by God to destabilise man, so that man just can’t predict everything. Our job, of course, is to work out what time it is. Is it a time to speak or is it a time to keep silence, work out what it is, work out quickly what sort of time it is, and act appropriately, because he says in Ch 8:5, “Whoso keeps the commandment” now we have broken into a context here, he’s talking about the commandment of the king in v 4. “Whoso keepeth the commandment of the king shall feel no evil thing, and a wise man’s heart discerned both time and judgment. Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him.” A wise man will know the proper time and the proper procedure. For as the NIV says here in v 6 “There is a proper time and procedure for every matter though the misery of man is great upon him.” And so there is a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to speak, a time to keep silent, a time to build, a time to destroy, all of these different times and it is our wisdom, brothers and sisters and young people, to identify those times as quickly as we can and act appropriately as we know how when they come upon us. But, back to Ch 3, because so much is outside our control, Solomon asks the question in v 9 what’s the point? “What profit has man that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?” What is the purpose of it all in v 10, I’ve seen the travail, he says, that God has given to the sons of men to be “exercised” or ‘humbled,’ in it, time is a cruel master, where is it all leading to, and here is the answer. V 11, the key verse in this chapter and a fundamental verse in the entire book. “He,” that is God, “has made everything beautiful” ‘appropriate’ “in his time, also he has set the world in man’s heart so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” And there’s the key, you see, it tells us here that “God has set the world in man’s heart,” it is the Heb word Olam, translated in v 14 by the word ‘forever,’ it means ‘eternity,’ God has set eternity in the heart of man. Now this is a fundamental issue, this is a fundamental difference between mankind and beasts, beasts do not have eternity in their heart, they can not appreciate eternal things, they don’t grasp or desire after eternal things, man does by virtue of his creation, a fundamental difference. So of course, man looks for fulfilment, he looks for satisfaction, he grapples with eternal issues. He dreams about what the future might bring, a cow doesn’t do that, a dog doesn’t do that. Here is man, he dreams about what the future might bring, what he might do tomorrow and what God he is going to worship, even uncivilised groups of people, instinctively try and worship something because of this design here, because of the way they are created. They look for eternal issues which animals obviously just do not do. V 21 tells us, “Who knows the spirit of man which goes upward and the spirit of the beast that goes down to the earth,” man’s aspirations ascend and animal’s aspirations descend, we are just different by design and by nature. Same body, different mind.

But that means that man is frustrated because he is not living an eternal creation, and things have limitations far, far more constraining than his imagination, and that frustrates him. Well, why is life like that? Solomon says in v 10, ‘ Why are we going though this travail, what is the point of this.’ Oh yes, the point is that we are created like that. Why are we created like that? And here’s the answer, I will read it to you, Acts 17:26-27, take a note of it. “God has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habituation.” Why “that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might reach out to him and find him.” We’ve got eternity in our hearts so that we will seek God. He is an eternal being, he relies upon eternal principles, we have to be able to appreciate those things, that’s why we are created like this. The same in V 14 “I know that whatsoever God doeth it shall be for eternity, forever, nothing can be put to it or taken away, God doeth it that men should fear before him.” So we are created like this you see to be able to appreciate spiritual things. If it wasn’t for this feeling none of us would ever seek God, there would be no religion, we would be just like the brute beasts, we would be brute beasts, wouldn’t we. But there is a balance in creation you see. If everything always went man’s way in life, he would be so free from trial that he would never ever pursue religion, not that he couldn’t, he just would never be moved to because he would have no need, because he could solve all his problems himself.

By the same token if nothing ever went well for man and he was continually frustrated he would become depressed and he would become bitter and he would never pursue religion because what would be the point, and therefore God gives man influence, but he doesn’t give him control, does he. We’ve got influence, brothers and sisters, but we don’t have control, and we’ve got limits and some variation within those limits, the taste if you like but not the fulfilment, and that’s how life is, that man might seek him, as Acts says, that’s the purpose of our creation and that’s the purpose of our development here in these verses, that’s why the world is what it is and therefore Solomon concludes in v 12, ‘Well,’ he says, “I know that there is no good in them but for a man to rejoice and to do good in his life, and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy all his labour because it is the gift of God.” There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labour, and that is the point isn’t it, this life will not give you you the eternal reward you are looking for, it is not designed to, it is not designed to. God only promises temporal rewards in this life of itself, so come to grips with it, realise it, come to grips with that and enjoy the temporal blessings of God as they come your way, and wait for the temporal to come later in another life,

V 16 and 17, he goes on and talks about the ultimate time, the time of judgment. Even though man does not have total control he is accountable for what he does, he can influence things, particularly he an influence the lives of other men, and God will judge him for that. Acts 17:31 tells us that he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, and for the saints in Ecc 12:14, he says that “God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. The judgment will affect the world, you see, it will affect the ecclesia as well. And in V 18 to the end of the Chapter we have the final section of Ecc Ch 3, the final time if you like, as I have called it here, “the time of death.” Ecc 3:18 he says, “I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men that God might manifest them that they might see that they themselves are beasts, for that which befalleth the sons of man befalleth beasts, even one thing befalleth them. As the one dieth , so dieth the other, yea they have all one breath so that a man hath no preeminence over a beast for all is vanity,” he says. And this is important, this is very important, here’s the real vanity of man’s natural life. When he dies, he dies just like the beast dies. You know this is a development in Solomon’s reasoning from what he had in chapter 2. He talked about death of course, back in Eccles Ch 2. He talked about a man dying he said, well, “A wise man dies as a fool dies.” He comes to Ch 3 and he says, “A wise man dies as a dog dies, as a cow dies,” it really doesn’t matter. He dies, he is just like the animal, wise and fools die together in Ch 2. And perhaps if you were a wise man you could say, ‘Well at least I am dying with other men,’ not the case in Ch 3, you are dying with all the rest of the natural creation, our lives, naturally speaking are as finite as that cow in the field. And if we don’t use the eternal principles we have locked in our hearts then we are no different and no better than the cow in the field.

Do you want to know the real perversity of man, brothers and sisters and young people? He doesn’t agree with that, he doesn’t think he dies at all, actually, because he’s got a different heart to cows and dogs. He doesn’t think he dies at all, in fact he uses V 21 here to prove it, and in Christendom at least this would be a verse which is used to prove the very opposite to what it is trying to prove here. Man’s got eternity in his heart they say, well he must have it in his body as well. V 21, “Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth,” it is a doctrinal verse. What I have done here is I have put down my answer to it, tried to put it in a logical manner, so that there is really no answer that the clergy could answer to this answer. See if you agree. If the spirit of man, the word “spirit” here is the word ‘ruach,’ if the spirit of man in Ch 3:21 is immortal, which is what is claimed, then animals also have immortal souls because men and beasts all have one breath, you will notice in Ch 3:19 the word “breath” there is spoken of being possessed by man and beast, it is the identical word “spirit” to what we read in v 21, it is the word ‘ruach.’ Well therefore if in v 21 a man has an immortal soul, then so does a cow in V 19, because we’ve all got the same ‘ruach,’ spirit. And secondly, if in v 21, where it says that the spirit of man goeth upwards, if that means that the soul goes to heaven, well then animals also ascend to heaven because God receives the spirit of man, says Job, and the beast, says the Psalmist, alike, he receives the spirit of every living thing, speaking of course of the life force of every living thing. So if V 21 proves that we go to heaven we will be there with the animals you see which is far more than the clergy would ever want to prove.

The third point, the meaning of ‘ruach’ depends on the context, you will see that even from what the translators have done in v 19-21, by translating the word ‘ruach’ by two different English words and their translation is not bad, in v 19 it does mean “breath” of course. Psalm 51 is perhaps the most useful to demonstrate the different way the word ‘ruach’ can be translated. Psa 51:10 David speaks about having a “right spirit,” the word “spirit” here is ‘ruach’ all he way through and in v 10 it means his mind, he is speaking about his disposition. In v 11 it talks about God not removing the Holy Spirit from him, speaking of the gifts or inspiration that David did have. In v 12, he talks about the “free spirit” that he possesses, or the life-force or the ‘spirit of life,’ as it occurs in Genesis, and the 4th definition and I think there really are only four, of ‘ruach,’ the fourth definition is what we read elsewhere in Ecclesiastes, is “breath,” ‘ruach’ can mean ‘breath.’ The point you see is that the context determines which of these things this simple Hebrew word takes. So you really can’t prove anything just from one of these verses, the context has to determine it. Well, what’s the context, well you notice in the margin, if your bible is like mine of v 21, Solomon says “who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward,” and “goeth upward” has got a marginal note saying “ascended” and the point is that we should re-translate it ‘who knoweth the spirit of man that exults itself, that ascends.” It is talking about the disposition of man, speaking of man’s aspirations, reflecting man’s difference to the animals. That should be Ecc 3:11 here. “God set the world in our heart or eternity in our heart,” he has not done that for animals, there is a major difference between our aspirations therefore and the aspirations of a cow. And finally he asks the question, “who does know the spirit of man, who does know the disposition of man?” That question is directly answered, John 2:25, where John says that “Christ knew what was in man.” I feel that has pretty much answered the verse, brothers and sisters and young people, that’s what it is saying, there is no mystery about it whatsoever, a doctrinal point, but obviously a verse which does come under some scrutiny if you ever have to deal with this subject.

So he concludes in v 22, with this summary again. “Wherefore, I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works for that is his portion. For who shall bring him to see what shall be after him,” concluding of course, exactly the same way in Ch 3 as he did in Ch 2, but with one difference, he’s added a dimension at the end of v 22 in Ecc 3. This dimension where he says “For who shall bring him to see what shall be after him,” ‘Who can show man what will happen after him. In Ch 2, he tries everything and whilst he enjoyed it, once the novelty wore off he wasn’t satisfied any more, so he says in Ch 2:24, that the best thing a man can do is enjoy his labour because whilst he is active he will have some temporary satisfaction. In Ch 3, he compares the eternity we have in our heart to the limitations of life. And he says that this life is not designed to provide eternal satisfaction, we know that from V 10. We are humbled by it we are in travail because of the conflict between our hearts and the limitations of the creation. Life is not designed to provide eternal satisfaction so don’t try and get eternal satisfaction from this life. Understand that the blessings are temporal and enjoy them for what they are, and that is what he concludes. But no sooner has he reached this conclusion than he has got to qualify it, you see.

And move to Ch 4. Suppose the circumstances of a man’s life prevent him from enjoying the fruits of his labour. Perhaps he lives under an oppressive ruler who robs him of all enjoyment of life, all the satisfaction of his work. He has no enjoyment whatsoever. What if a man just can’t enjoy the works of his hands for any reason. And this is the story of Ch 4. There are many things in life that can rob us of the enjoyment that God provides, and in this Chapter Solomon gives six examples of the enjoyment of life being robbed from man. He can be oppressed, he can suffer envy from his neighbour, he can be idle, he can be greedy, he can have solitude or wilfulness, all of these things as we will see rob him of the simple and basic gift of God.

So he begins in Ch 4:1, “I returned and I considered all the oppressions that are done under he sun and behold the tears of such as were oppressed and they had no comforter, and on the side of the oppressors there was power, but they had no comforter.” “All the oppressions under the sun,” he says. ‘I stopped and thought about everything I knew, what I had seen in other countries, what ambassadors had told me, what I had seen myself in my own country.’ He surveys all the injustices of life that he has been privy to, from I suppose, simply the unreasonable land owner, all the way through to the most ruthless tyrant, and he considers it, he thinks about what it means, what the implications of that are, and all of a sudden this picture springs into his mind, the tears of the oppressed, he says and you can see Solomon getting worked up, brothers and sisters, as he writes it. There was no comforter, anguish, injustice, helplessness, no comforter. He mentions it twice here, They had no comforter, they had no comforter, and if that is all there is for them he says in V2, well then they are better off dead. In fact V 3 better not to have been born at all and at least shortcut the process, if that is all there is in it. ‘That’s it. That’s the answer to oppression, there is nothing more to say,’ says Solomon, except for this, Psa 72. What do you think this meant to Solomon, this is a Psalm written by his Dad wasn’t it, a Psalm for Solomon, we know that because the last verse says, the prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.

This is a Psalm that David wrote for Solomon and he must have been thinking about a Psalm like this when he spoke words like that in Eccl 4 “Give the King thy judgments O God, thy righteousness unto the King’s son, look he will judge the poor of the people, he will save the children of the needy, and break in pieces the oppressor, he will deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also, and him that hath no helper, and redeem his soul from deceit and violence and precious shall be their blood in their sight. He could not tolerate oppression, injustice. This is Solomon’s Psalm, this is the Psalm that David wrote for him, he could not stomach oppression and the tears of them that are oppressed, they had no comforter, he says. It will be fixed, by his own Psalm, that will be fixed.

And the second issue, Ch 4:4, envy. Envy! Again he says I considered all travail and every right work, that for this a man is envied of his neighbour, this is also vanity and vexation of spirit. What is he saying, “Every right work,” he says, it ought to be ‘every skilful work.’ This is a common problem, a man performs a work, he does it very diligently, he does it very skilfully, and he achieves something that no other man can do, or few other men can do, and he enjoys it, he enjoys it whilst he does it and he takes pleasure in it once it is finished and he enjoys his portion from God, until someone sees it and criticises it, envies him, despises him, and ridicules his work and robs him of any pleasure he had, now he despises the work of his hands, this great skilful work of his hands. Vanity.

The third example V 5, the fool “folds his hands together and eats his own flesh,” this is the opposite position, this man does no work at all, he has no joy in labour, because he performs no labour. The hands that are spoken about here are, of course, are power, activity, this fool does nothing at all, he eats his own flesh, he brings himself to ruin, the pursuit of idleness which is the life of fools. V 9-11, “How long will thou sleep O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? yet a little sleep, a little slumbering, a little folding of the hands to sleep,” that is the point he is making here, the fool foldeth his hands together, he reduces himself to inactivity, “So shall thy poverty come as one that one that travelleth has, and thy want as an armed man.” All of a sudden, you are poor, all of a sudden in desperate need.

The slothful man says, “Ah there is a lion in a way, a lion is in the streets. The door turneth upon its hinges so does the slothful man upon his bed,” it is an effort to get out of bed, it is an effort to roll over in the bed, much less get out of bed. “The slothful man hides his hand in his bosom it grieves him to bring it again to his mouth,” it is too hard, he will eat his own flesh before he cooks a meal. “A sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason” there’s always a reason not to do anything today. And of course, in Prov 20, he won’t plough by reason of the cold, therefore he shall beg in harvest and have nothing, he will be reduced to eating his own flesh, he will waste away, because he is too lazy. He has no enjoyment as we said, because he does no labour.

And here is a pitiful situation, here’s No 4. Greed, V 7, “I returned and I saw vanity under the sun. There is one alone, that is to say, there is one man, alone, and there is not a second. Yea, he has neither child nor brother yet is there no end of all his labour. Neither is his eye satisfied with riches, neither says he for whom do I labour and believe my soul of good, This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.” No friends, no relatives, he is a miser, he is a recluse, this man. All he wants is money, everything in life turns around money, he can never get enough, he is never satisfied, the verse says, the more he has the more he wants. Look at the determination, “Neither child nor brother, neither is his eye satisfied, neither does he ask ‘Why am I doing this?’” Absolutely focused on one pursuit and one issue only and does not enjoy a bit of it, totally driven just to accumulate dollars and cents and does not enjoy it one bit. He is a miser and all misers are miserable aren’t they, by definition, he is a ‘miserable miser.’ No enjoyment, life holds no enjoyment whatsoever for him, he has no gift from God. And between those two extremes, the extremes of verses 7 and 8 and v 5 we have v 6, we have this bridge in v 6. V 6 he says, ‘Don’t be a fool and be idle, don’t be a miser and deprive yourself of any enjoyment in life just because you work so hard,’ “Better,” he says, “is a handful with quietness than both the hands full with travail and vexations.” There is a marvellous summary of that, just back a page or two, Prov 30:7-9, Look at this, this is against Ecc 5:6. “Two things” he says, “two things have I required of thee, deny me them not before I die, remove far from me vanity and lies and give me neither poverty or riches. Feed me with food convenient to me, lest I be full and deny thee and say Who is Yahweh, or lest I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain, not too little, not too much. Between a fool, as it were, in his poverty and a miser in his wealth, food convenient for me, and you will notice the margin here, “food convenient for me,” my allowance, just give me my allowance, let God decide and I will be content with that, and of course that is the right answer isn’t it, not too little not too much.
The 5th example, begins in v 9 of Ch 4 and goes all the way through to V 12. For example, solitude, which Solomon deals with by listing all the benefits of fellowship and friendship. V 9 He says, “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labour.” And he goes on in V10 and explains that companionship brings health in labour, V 11 he says, companionship brings solace or comfort in rest, V12 he says it brings safety when you are in danger, so the ‘two’ in v9 are in contrast with the ‘one’ alone in V 8, you see. There is ‘one’ in V8, ‘two’ he says in v 9 are better than one, but better than all, in fact, is three V 12, the threefold cord which is not quickly broken. Well here of course the sum of the group exceeds the sum of the individual parts. The Apostle Paul, a classic example, you think of it, he recommended the single lifestyle didn’t he, so that you can devote more of your time to the Truth, you don’t have to look after a wife or of a husband, you can devote more of your time to the Truth if you are single, but wherever he went, he too someone. Wherever he went, he took someone with him, be it Silas or Timothy or Barnabus, he was always accompanied and whenever you read what he writes. You go and read the greetings of the letters of the epistles of the New Testament. From Paul and Silas our brother, from Paul and Timothy, often, most often writes from himself and someone else, go and check, but the crucial factor of all this, is that unknown to the man of V 8, unknown to the miser of V 8 there is Prov 18:24, “a man that hath friends, must show himself friendly.” There aren’t many ways to have companions, and if you are not a friendly person you won’t have them and you will deprive yourself of one of the gifts of God, “a man that hath friends must show himself friendly.”

Well the last example in Ch 4 is from vv 13 to the end of the chapter is the old and foolish king. We read that last fortnight, the example of wilfulness, the king who is deliberately foolishness, who just won’t do what he knows he ought to do, and the reward of that, of course, is great misfortune as you read and as we discussed in our last class. We are not going to spend any time on it tonight, we know what it is talking about now, but of course, it seems as though at the end of his life, Solomon did realise that he had been wilful and he could see the implications of the misfortunate conduct that he had taken.

Well Ch 5, here is our exhortation, and Solomon breaks the record now and spends seven verses talking to the ecclesia, seven verses speaking to the brothers and sisters. This is the first of the direct exhortations in the book of Ecclesiastes. It is conspicuous of course by its use of the second person. What I mean by that is you read in 5:1 “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God,” you see? V 2, “Be not rash with thy mouth or let thy heart be hasty,” and through here you have “thee” and “thy” “thou” mentioned but not elsewhere in Ecclesiastes. Elsewhere in Ecclesiastes you’ve got “under the sun,” but not here, because this is not “under the sun,” this is to the ecclesia, so for example you read Ch 4:3, the last words, “under the sun,” V 7 “under the sun,” V15 Ch 4, “under the sun,” and the same again in Ch 5:13 and v 18 and elsewhere in this section, “under the sun” is appearing, either side of this little exhortation to the brethren. And it is broken into three sections as you have got here, ‘a warning against unworthy worship,’ ‘a warning against unworthy prayer’ and ‘a warning against unworthy vows,’ We’ve just called it on the overhead here ‘A direct exhortation.’ I suppose to be consistent with what I have got up here in my titles, I could have called it “Human vanity imposed by the saints.” We can remove pleasure from our lives by conducting ourselves in the ecclesia of God before God in an unworthy manner.

What Solomon is saying is this, you see, everything in life, if done for its own sake, is vanity. Everything in this life if simply lived for its own sake is vanity, because there is nothing permanent in this life, nothing can satisfy us, except religion. Even though we might serve God and the ecclesia of God in this life, it is not such a temporal thing as everything else outside. For example, think of this, it is one thing to be an old and foolish King in v 13 of Ch 4, it is one thing to be wilfully foolish and be a fool, it is another thing in Ch 5:1 to wilfully offer an unworthy sacrifice and be a fool. It is one thing to be rich in business in Ch 4:8 and devote yourself completely to the excess of business, being so preoccupied with it that you can’t think straight about any thing else, it is another thing in Ch 5:3 to have your prayer affected by your preoccupation. In Ecc 5:3, he says that “a dream cometh through the multitude of business, and a fools voice is known by the multitude of words.” His point of this, if you are very busy, if you are stressed and you’ve got a lot on, you will dream and you will talk in your dream, it is the mind’s way of unwinding, of dealing with all the complexities of life, and trying to chart a course through the problems you are facing. But a fool will pray like that, he will pray as incoherently as a man who is having a nightmare in speaking. And the way fools do that, the reason fools do that, is because they are preoccupied, they don’t have their heads in this book, they do everything but. Their prayers rant and they are long and they really are meaningless. God says there is a folly and there is a fault, you see. Similarly, it is one thing to be idle in Ch 4:5 and to be a fool, it is another thing in Ch 5:4 to be idle and not pay your vows.

When you come to these seven verses 7 to 8 verses, that is, we are not just talking about the temporal, temporary things of life, we are talking about living before God and not living “under the sun.” We are living in a creation beset by vanity where everything is only of temporal value except worship, these are eternal issues and therefore there is a time to sacrifice and there is a time to refrain, there is a time to pray, there is a time to keep silence, there is a time to vow, there is a time to pay your vows, you see? After all these, in the context of Ch 4, he stops and he makes a point, not all of life is as vain as all the rest of life, Ch 5:8. Now these are difficult, Vv 8,9 Oppression andwealth. From Ch 5:8 all the way through to the end of Ch 6 now he is going to talk about money. The great burden of mankind, the great oppressor of mankind, because he thinks it is the panacea of all problems, really, he thinks it is the oracle, well, that will solve everything, but it doesn’t and it won’t but it feels like it might. V 8 he says, “If thou sees the oppression of the poor and the violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter,” he says, don’t be surprised, “because he that is higher than the highest regardeth and there be higher than they. Moreove, the profit of the earth is for all, the king himself is served by the field.”

Now the translation of both of these verses is disputed and most modern translations differ slightly on what these verses should mean. I want to read you the New King James Version because I think is right and conveys I think the sense of what this is speaking about because it is an issue of poor people being oppressed and wealth coming into the picture in the immediately successive verses. The NKJ, “If you see the oppression of the poor and the violent perversion of justice and righteousness in a province do not marvel at the matter, for high official watches over high official and high officials are over them, moreover the profit of the land is for all, even the king is served from the field.” Or as the Living Bible says, of all things, “Even the king milks the land for his own profit.” Don’t be surprised if lesser officials oppress the poor, because higher officials are oppressing them, and it is happening all the way up to the top, for money. The major source of oppression, money, and here he goes in v 10, “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance, with increase. This is also vanity,” he says. And here is the fallacy of wealth, we all want that extra little bit of comfort, but we are never satisfied when we get there. Have you ever tried it? I am sure you have. Am I right? Of course I am right, I’ve tried it myself. If I paid you $100,000 or more a year, you would increase your standard of living, and you wouldn’t have any more spending cash than you do now. All of a sudden things would occur, the fact is, desire itself is insatiable, it is a lust of the eyes, it is a lust of the flesh. You can’t satisfy lust, all you can do is feed it. It is a lust you can only feed it, you can’t kill it, you can never satisfy it, all you can do is feed it. As one commentator said, “The love of money increases in proportion as money itself increases.” Isn’t that true? “The love of money increases in proportion as money itself increases.” You can never satisfy lust.

And there are side effects, V 11, “When goods increase,” he says, “they are increased that eat them.” Don’t forget the beneficiaries. “When goods increase they are increased that eat them and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes.” The more you get the more your circle of dependents grows, the more your standard increases, the more your taxation increases. You are “putting your money into a bag with holes” before you know what you are doing, don’t you, so that very soon, the greatest satisfaction you receive out of your enormous pay check is watching the pay check come in, you don’t have any more spending money. You are proud of it because you earn so much, you can’t do any more with it than your next door neighbour who is on half your wage, because your circumstances have changed to absorb your providence.

Do you know how Scripture describes that? Proverbs 23:4-5, “Labour not to be rich, cease from thine own wisdom, will thou set thine eyes on that which is not for riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away as an eagle towards heaven.”Prov 23:4-5, and it is true. “And furthermore,” he says, V 12, “The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much, but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.” You are never satisfied V 10. You have attracted a multitude of dependents V 11, and now you can’t sleep because of stress, V 12, and he labouring man he survives, he doesn’t die young, he sleeps well, he wakes up contented and refreshed, because he’s got something money can’t buy, hasn’t he? He’s got contentment and you can’t buy that with money. It is a very fickle commodity isn’t it, it is a very fickle commodity. It pretends to be so powerful, but it is notoriously unreliable. And Solomon tells us a story now between vv 13-16, he tells us this story, of a man beset by wealth, V 13, he calls it a sore evil, this story because the word “sore” means ‘wicked,’ and ‘sick,’ it is a wicked and sick evil, a sore evil, he goes again in V 16, it hurts the owner, end of V 13, he’s got a sickness because of in V 17. So here he is this man, he endures extreme hardship. He works night and day to stack up money so that he might profit a dynasty after him, he invests, he goes without, he deprives himself. Look at V 17, look what he is like, V 17, “All his days also he eateth in darkness and he has much sorrow and wrath in his sickness.” He is mean, Oh, he’s mean, he won’t even turn the light on to see what he is eating, and it is an illness to him, he is obsessed, he is sick because he is so filthy rich, until V 14, something goes wrong, his fortune collapses, maybe the stockmarket , maybe a bad business decisions, maybe a superannuation scheme. Something happens and all of a sudden, the son who was going to be the heir of the dynasty and continue the name, grows up in poverty. Overnight, everything is changed, and then the old man dies in V 22, and you might say ‘well serves him right, he died a failure,” but it is irrelevant isn’t it because V 15 says as he came forth from his mother’s womb naked, naked he shall return and go as he came. He is going to take nothing of his labour which he may carry away in his hand. Job 1:21, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, naked shall I return thither. Job 1:21. Yahweh gave and Yahweh has taken away. And that’s the point, you see, that’s the point when you get to V 18, the blessings come from God and so does the power to use them come from God. Look V 18, “Behold,” here’s our conclusion again, you see he keeps coming back to this conclusion and he changes it a bit each time. “Behold that which I have seen, it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink and to enjoy the good of all his labour which he taketh under the sun, all the days of his life which God giveth him, for it is his portion.” Solomon comes back to this conclusion, again and again. Now he adds another dimension, V 19. “Every man to whom also man has given riches and wealth, and has given him power to eat thereof,” put a line around that. “ “And has given him power to eat thereof and to take his portion and to rejoice in his labour. This is the gift of God.” There are two gifts of God. The first gift is the portion you get, the enjoyment from doing the activity. The second is the power to enjoy it, the opportunity to partake of the gift. You need two gifts of God and there is the qualification you see, it is one thing to have the blessing, in this case, the blessing of wealth, and it is another thing to have the power to enjoy it, that is and added blessing from God and by no means guaranteed. And so in V 20 he says “For he shall not much remember the days of his life” this is the man of course, who has been given the power to eat, “he won’t much remember the days of his life because God answers in the joy of his heart.” NIV “He seldom reflects on the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart.” He’s got the blessing and the ability to enjoy the blessing, he doesn’t even think about yesterday. This is the man who sees the blessings of life for what they are. God expects us to keep life in perspective, you see. The man who can truly enjoy life is the man who can look beyond it. That is the antidote, really, to discontent. What do we care if someone has more than us. What do you care if someone has more than you except if you are living life as an end in itself. Well, then you care. But if this life, for us, is not an end in itself, what do your care if now someone has more than you. Let’s just be thankful for what you have got and enjoy the blessings God gives us and just ask for an allowance and be content.

But suppose God doesn’t give a man the power to enjoy it. What does a man do then? What if a man is powerless to enjoy the simple things of life that God gives him. And Solomon gives us two examples V 1 and 2, a man who has riches, wealth and honour and everything he could possibly wants, but he dies young without an heir, and his fortune goes to someone else he doesn’t even know. Perhaps there is a war, perhaps he is in a car accident all of a sudden, he’s gone, you see. But you can imagine that man previously thinking about his future, setting himself up thinking about the time when all this hard work will pay off, retirement is just a few years away. Never happens, never happens, a life wasted, he says. He had the blessings never ever used them, was not given the power to use them by God. VV 3-6 the story of another man, he’s just a rich as the first man, but this man lives for years and years. He’s got a hundred children, but it says in v 3 “He has no burial.” No matter what he does, he can’t die, he just keeps staying alive, on and on and on, in fact in V 6 it says, “Yea though he live a thousand years, twice told, he’s lived twice as long as the oldest man that ever lived, but he doesn’t have health. He is a sick man. V 3 the end of V 3 “I say that an untimely birth is better than he.” He is going to live for 2,000, he’s going to have 100 children, but he’s got ill health. His life is a life of misery for 2,000 years. All he wants to do is to die, but he can’t die. Better for him than that he had never been born, because at least then he would be free from the burden of living. That sentiment is a Biblical sentiment. There was a man who had a lot of money and who just wanted to die, Job Ch 3. “Why did I not die from the womb, why did I not give up the spirit when I came out of the belly for now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should l have slept, and then I would have been at rest with kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves, or with princes that have gold who filled their houses with silver, or as an hidden and untimely birth I had not been, as infants which never saw light. Oh,” he says, “there the wicked cease from troubling, there the weary be at rest, wherefore is light given to him that is in misery,” ‘why do I have to wake up the next day,’ says Job. You can see the problem, this is exactly the same problem as this man here in VV 3-6, and life unto the bitter in soul, which life for them that become the life, and dig for it more than for hid treasures which rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave. You see this is all this man wanted but he could not die, it was better therefore, Solomon says, that he was never born than that he endures that. This is the value of the blessings of God and the ability to enjoy them. This man here, 2000 years old, 100 children, rich as you can imagine, would have given anything for a simple healthy life, wouldn’t he. But sadly it is something that every man has to learn for himself and most men never ever learn it. V 7 All the labor of man is for his mouth but the appetite is not filled.

This is somewhat a reiteration of Ch 5:10, where he is never ever satisfied with silver, but this time Solomon goes further because look, “the appetite is not filled.” Look at your margin, “appetite,” the margin says ‘soul’ it means something more than just ‘stomach’ doesn’t it. You know how Moses would have said against that verse? “Man does not live by bread alone.” He needs more than physical nourishment. He has got an appetite that needs more than just temporal nourishment, so what does he do? He turns to money. V 8 “For what is the wise more than the fool, what has the poor who knoweth to walk before the living.” Wisdom won’t help you, he says. Even the poor man’s who adjusts his desires to his mean is no better off. He is just as unsatisfied as the rich man who can never satiate his desire. Though as V 9 says, making the best of what you have is obviously better than desiring something you never achieve, but wisdom doesn’t bring satisfaction any more than folly. And now Solomon concludes in V 10, the last three verses. This is how life is, this is how creation is, it is what it is and man is what he is, v 10. “That which hath been is named already, and it is known that it is man, neither may he contend with him” that is God, “that is mightier than he. Whatever exists has already been named and what man is has been known already. Neither can man contend with God who is stronger than him.” Why does he say that,brothers and sisters? Well because of V 11, look at this, “Seeing there be many things that increase vanity what is man the better?” Now you’ve got to make a translation, the word “things” should be the word ‘words.’ There be many words that increase vanity, what is man the better. You see the point, Man complains, he doesn’t like restrictions, he doesn’t like being told what to do, he doesn’t like having limitations placed upon him in this life. Nothing turns out the way it is meant to but he is no position to argue about it because who can contend with one who is mightier than him. And all the words that are said about this life, about the problems of this life, it is vanity he says because man refuses to seek the obvious solution, he refuses to fulfil his appetite in the obvious way, and therefore V 12 “Who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life, which he spends as a shadow, for who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun.” Does man want to know the solution? Does man want to know what’s after him under the sun? does man want to know what is the good for a man in this life? as it says, ‘no he doesn’t.’

The answer is obvious, but he never ever finds it does he, and he dies unsatisfied? And it is interesting though that this is the very same way that Solomon concluded Ch 3. In Ch 3:21, he said, “And who knoweth the spirit of man that exults itself, the quest for eternity, the satisfaction of appetite, three chapters later, we still haven’t found out what is good for a man. We are no closer three chapters later to answering that question than we were back in Ch 3. In Ecc 3:22 he says, “Who shall bring man to see what shall be after him,” exactly what he says in the last lines in this verse here, “Who can tell a man what shall be after him.” You think of the issue, brothers and sisters and young people, the more a man gets, the more he wants, desire can never be satisfied, it is a lust isn’t it. The more he gets, the more his burdens increase, dependents, sleeplessness, what’s more there is no guarantee that he will ever be able to keep his wealth, either for himself or for his heir. He might die an early death, he might die an early death, or he might live a long long time without any enjoyment. In any case, his labour is in vain because he can never ever satisfy his appetite, he can never ever achieve fulfilment no matter how much money he spends, and then he dies, having existed as he says here, “only for a moment” only like a shadow without the real answer he was looking for all along. You see Solomon isn’t finding answers here, he is just starting to close doors, none of these things are solutions. One after the other, four chapters now he is just starting to close off all these avenues of investigation, they are not the solution.

So what is the answer, what is the good for man in this life? Well it is in the New Testament. If there was ever a commentary on Ecc 5 and 6 it’s got to be here in 1 Tim 6. Look at that, look at that, here is V 26, I’ve missed a few verses out, from Vv 6-19, here is Ecclesiastes referred to in those verses. “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” “What profit does a man have?” Ecc 5:16 says, well there’s the profit, it is “great gain to have Godliness with contentment. For we brought nothing in this world and it is certain that we can carry nothing out,” we’ve just read it in Ch 5:15, haven’t we. “Having food and raiment let us therewith be content.” “It is good and comely” V 18 of Ch 5 says, “to eat and drink and to enjoy your portion.” They that would be rich fall into temptation and and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts.” And he was hurting that man in Ch 5:13 wasn’t he, as you read, “For the love of money is the root of all evil.” Ch 5:10, he “loved silver.” “Charge them that are rich in this world that they be not high minded nor trust in uncertain riches,” there it is, they evaporated in Ch 5:14, those riches. But in Ch 5:19, “God gives them the power to eat thereof.” “That they be rich in good works.” V 18 of Ch 5 “It is good to enjoy the good of his labour. Lay up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come. Who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun,” Ecc 6. And this is in the time to come, that is in the time to come, of course, the time of eternal life for all those, who have the appetite for spiritual things.’

Transcription by Fay Berry 2017