Text: Ecclesiastes 4:1-16
The basic premise of this portion of scripture appears to be, that life is absurd without an adequate world-view.
We concluded our last article with Solomon’s observation in Eccl. 3:11…
“He (God) has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.”
God has set eternity in our hearts. He has made us yearn for something more…something beyond ‘life under the sun”. He has created us for eternity, but has confined us within time and space, and he knows that we will never be satisfied here.
God has planted dissatisfaction deep in our hearts for his own reasons
- He wants us to seek Him
- God wants to be found.
- And it is in ‘finding’ him that we are made whole
God does not just want us to live, he wants us to think and come to know what life is all about. He wants us to accept the worldview set out in scripture, starting with the this one basic truth, that men and women are made in the image of God.
He wants us to know that He is God…and that we must trust him, to among other things, provide answers, even when we don’t know what the questions are.
God wants our lives to make sense, and to do that, they have to be anchored in special revelation, in a word spoken from beyond the sun. It is the place to which God ultimately calls us.
Solomon’s world view was inadequate only because it was incomplete. We would agree with much of what he said, but he lived before the coming of Jesus and without access to all of the answers that he provided.
Solomon knew about God. He was a student of scripture and a staunch believer. As you know, God spoke to Solomon at the start of his reign
The Lord opened Solomon’s mind and granted him an extra measure of wisdom and along with the prophets, God inspired him to write. So, Solomon’s world-view included God, but he still wrestled with questions that God had not answered.
If there is a lesson here, it is that God does not expect believers to “check their brains at the door”.
- He has given us ‘dominion’ over the work of his hands.
- He expects us to investigate the world that we live in. So the questions in Ecclesiastes are a part of that investigation
- God wants us to seek, knowing that if we look long enough, we will always find him…even if some final answers are held back in reserve.
Solomon’s search was not unbelief looking for belief. It was faith in search of a deeper faith. It was incomplete information longing for more. But Biblical faith must be held with a sense of God’s divine oversight and excercised with humility
You will notice a variety of subjects in our text. They are found from Ecclesiastes 3:16 to the end of chapter 4
For the sake of simplicity, we will group these into four subject areas
- Social Injustice (3:16-17, 4: 1-3)
- End of Life issues – death (3:18-21)
- The folly of life’s paradoxes (4:4-6)
- Vanity (4:7-16)
The question for Solomon was…how do all of these individual facts fit together in to a cohesive whole?
What world-view can account for them all and still make sense?
And is that world-view one that is worth living for?
Chapter 3:16-17 deal with Social Injustice: (3:16-17, 4: 1-3)
These verses reflect two things.
- There is such a thing as real right and wrong.
- There is a way that things ought to be and then the way that they are. God has put us together in such a way that something within us demands justice. Fair is fair. It doesn’t matter where you live, people know justice when they see it.
God has also made us so that we are driven to approve of things good and right. He has placed within us, a sense of obligation…to stand on the side of right and to oppose that which is wrong.
So when Solomon took stock of his world, he observed that neither justice nor righteousness prevailed. Life under the sun is not fair. It appears that the wicked are winning and that is just not right. If it is true that ‘power corrupts then absolute power corrupts absolutely”. This is why powerful people are very rarely just. And as long as the powerful are wicked, the weak are abused.
Now you’d think that since Solomon was king, he could just put a to stop it. But he realized, that all by himself, he could not stamp out injustice. Systemic evil, tilts the scales toward injustice. There are limits to what a good king can do when he inherits an evil administration. And cleaning house might just get him killed.
When Solomon came to power, his father David handed him a hit-list. There were people in David’s administration that had murdered and had wronged the king– but remained unpunished. It fell to Solomon to deal with these.
- Joab – the head of David’s army had murdered two men and was to be executed
- Shimei had cursed David when he fled Jerusalem before the armies of Absalom
- And there was Adonijah (Solomon’s half brother) who tried to grab the throne out from under Solomon, just before David died
Solomon inherited unfinished business. He had to put the royal house in order – or lose the throne.
So we are not surprised at the pessimistic tone that we find in the first 3 verses of chapter 4. Solomon congratulates the dead….or better still, those who have never been born.
He is discouraged and jaded. Injustice is so universal – that death is better than life. Better not to have been born than to endure such a world. .
In a sense, Solomon was breaking trail for the philosophers of the future. Once you start down that road, it leads to Nihilism. Life is meaningless. It is unfair and absurd. Better never to have been born than to face life as we know it.
At the same time, there is a reason why Solomon’s was not a Nihilist, as he puts it in 3:17:
“I said to myself, “God will judge both the righteous man and the wicked man,” for a time for every matter and for every deed is there”.
In other words…In God’s own good time, He will judge. Surely, in God’s system of justice….no one gets away with evil.
And then in 3:18-21, Solomon returns to end of life issues.
God has so ordered the world that death is always “in your face”.
- We are creatures before the creator – born, to die.
- Death and dying are universal – as is the realization that no one is exempt.
The Old Testament calls it “going the way of all the earth”. No one gets out of life alive. And of course, this lead Solomon to speculate about – what happens next?
The Bible says that our bodies are made of dust and return to it.
- But what is a person’s spirit made of?
- And where does it go when we die?
That was his question – and it is a good one. It’s a question that the whole world would like to have answered. But attempts to interview the dead are condemned by God.
This question marks the boundary of Solomon’s world-view. He had no answer and neither would we, had God not given one in the resurrection of Jesus. He rose from the grave and promised the same to those who belong to Him.
We now know, that there is life after death and that there is also death after death. There is judgment both in this life and in the one to come.
Now in chapter 4:4-6, Solomon turns to the matter of folly. There are two kinds of folly that he talks about.
The first has to do with the nature of work. Work is a good thing. It is necessary and God-given. Without it, there would be no food on the table, clothing on our backs or houses to live in. Society cannot exist unless it’s citizens work.
But people have taken a good thing and made a competition out of it. It’s not enough just to have enough, I have to have more than you. Solomon says, that this too is vanity and striving after the wind.
If you read Ecclesiastes 2, this is exactly what Solomon did. He compared himself with everyone else and said…I’m winning. But when you are number one…there is only one way to go. This too is vanity.
So there’s the kind of work that’s done for all the wrong reasons. And then there’s the other extreme – those who just won’t work at all. They refuse to play the game and in the process refuse to do the things that are necessary to keep body and soul together.
So you have the man who says to himself “One hand full of rest is better than two hands full of wind”. But that means that he has nothing to eat. He becomes a burden to society and a danger to himself.
But if giving up is not the answer, then what is?
In 4:7, Solomon comes back to the subject of vanity. He sees it everywhere – and he does look everywhere.
Futility is a built-into all of life. It’s not an optional extra, it is a part of the base model that everyone starts with. It is there in the very ‘nature of things’.
The exercise that follows is somewhat surprising. Solomon spends time saying ‘this is better than that’….comparing one specific to another and then declaring a winner.
But so what.
He seems to say…that since I can’t make sense of the big picture, let’s just spend our time on minutia. But while I am doing that, life goes on, with or without an adequate world-view. You still have to bake your bread, wash your clothes and earn a living.
So Solomon gives us his own list of things
It is better for a man to have heirs than to have none. Why work hard to build an estate when you have no family to inherit?
And did you know that two are better than one?
a. You’ve got someone to turn to when you need help.
b. When you are cold, two can keep warm
c. When you are lonesome, two’s company
d. And when danger comes, there is strength in numbers
But more than that, Solomon is saying, don’t live life without asking “why?”
It may be that “life under the sun” is unfair and pointless, but you still need common sense just to get by. So, it is better to be poor and wise than rich, and foolish. Wisdom is better than riches…since power is short-lived.
The same people love a new king get tired of him just as quickly. They’ll crown you today and kick you out tomorrow. Popularity is a flash in the pan. You can’t please all of the people all of the time or even most of the people some of the time.
And the reason ought to be obvious. Those who choose a king are looking for things to get better. But they too are stuck with ‘life under the sun’.
So they think that a new king is the answer. They want a man who can give them what only God can. And when he can’t deliver – they get rid of him and move on. This too is vanity.
Now suppose that you line up all of these ‘better things’ and put them into practice, what then do you have? Solomon says, that you still have vanity and futility. A collection of non answers and comparative values get us no closer to ultimate meaning and purpose in life.
Limited Conclusions:
There is a place for practical wisdom.
- God wants us to live responsibly
- To feed our families and care for them.
- To help the poor and reduce suffering.
- To protect the innocent, maintaining law and order
- To love our enemies and to do good to those who abuse us.
But these alone do not grant an understand what life on earth is all about.
Day by day, we are easily bogged down in the mechanics of living. Too busy being busy to ask the really important questions. Days of chronic busyness are days of vanity. And even those who choose the better things in life – are still just striving after the wind.
How then do we rise above the better things – under the sun – and take hold of the permanent ones?
Here is what Solomon says in 3:14
“I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him”
The things that last, are the things that God does. His work is permanent and it is therefore His work that ultimately counts.
So, if meaning exists – it is found in God’s work. Since God alone is eternal, meaning and purpose reside in Him.
The question then for us, is:
What are God’s purposes for this world?
And “how do I fit into these?”
Well, as Christians, we know God’s answers
- He has created us to be the objects of his love.
- God demonstrated his love for us – when Christ died on the cross
- The Son of God has redeemed us from sin and has sent us to tell others.
- He has made us partners in the enterprise of saving the world
This is divine meaning for human life. It is what life is all about. It is real life, infused with purpose, and reaching into eternity.
In Christ, life suddenly makes sense. God’s word, unfolds a view of the world – found nowhere else. But its not the novelty of it that makes it unique. It is the fact that it is true – for it is of God.
This is the good news. It is what the prophets foretold but did not understand.
These are things into which angels longed to look, and they are ours – now – without looking anywhere else.