Ecclesiastes Lesson 11

Solomon Smashes HVP Purpose: “Pride in Workmanship” – 4:4-6

Before we get to Ecclesiastes turn to Ephesians 1. This section of Ecclesiastes has been dealing with the problem of man and the universe; chapters 3 and 4 deal with this problem. As always, the problem that Ecclesiastes is showing you is that if you are a person who is outside of the divine viewpoint, if at the time you receive Christ and He puts you in union with Him, the top circle representing salvation, bottom circle representing your present experience, if you are outside of this bottom circle as a believer, you are out in the area of human viewpoint, you are out the will of God, essentially you are out of His will totally for your life. If you’re out here then there are certain consequences; the wages of sin is death, and one area of spiritual death concerns the area of the intellect and how you look at things. And this book is dealing basically with spiritual death in the area of the intellect. The book of Ecclesiastes is also written to show you the fallacy of non-belief, or the poor base of non-Christianity or if you want to say where non-Christianity or anti-Christianity logically leads one. And we have gone through several sessions of this book and the section we are about to get involved with deals with man and how he thinks.

There are two ways in which you think and we have to understand this before we actually get into the passage in Ecclesiastes so we’ll see what Solomon’s point is. Your soul is made up of various functions and your human spirit is made up of various functions. The soul has volition, personal affections, mentality, bodily affections, your human spirit has functions of guidance and teaching, has functions of worship and functions of conscience. Here is your soul and here is your spirit; now these functions of your conscience and soul act in different ways depending on whether you’re thinking according to divine viewpoint or whether you’re thinking according to human viewpoint. If you are growing in the Lord and becoming a mature Christian, this has to do with maturity, remember there are two aspects of the Christian life, there is the aspect of maturity and then there is the aspect of fellowship. At any given moment you are in fellowship or out of fellowship; that is an instantaneous concept true each moment of time. It’s either/or, there’s no degrees, it’s just one way or the other. That’s fellowship.

However, there’s another concept to the Christian life and that has to do with growth and maturity, and growth and maturity has to do with the idea that you progress. This is a relative thing and maturity takes time. The best illustration of these two concepts and to distinguish between them is to think of health and let the analogy be between health/fellowship and growth/maturity. So you can have a young baby who is at the beginning of his growth, and yet he is healthy or he is not healthy, one or the other. You can have an adolescent, midway through the growth period, healthy or not healthy. You can have an adult in the area of maturity, healthy or not healthy. So you want to see these two dimensions to the Christian life and don’t confuse two. One is either/or, the other is gradual, the other is relative.

Now the concept that we’re about to deal with in Ephesians has to do with maturity and how maturity shows up in your soul. Therefore in Ephesians 1:17-18 we have the introduction to maturity in the Christian. Paul prays this for his converts; this is a prayer, which by the way, shows you what a fantastic amount of information Paul had. When he prayed he didn’t just pray around the world for the birds and the bees, he had specific prayer requests and he made these knowing the mechanics of God. For example, to use an analogy, if your car didn’t start this morning: oh God, start the car. Well, if you are a mechanic and you knew there was something wrong, say with the electrical system, you’d pray more specifically: Lord, I’ve got to work through the electrical system. Your prayer would be as specific as your knowledge. Well, Paul’s prayer is because he knows the mechanics of the human soul. And so he prays specifically in verse 17, this is his prayer request introduced by “that.” “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, might give unto you,” the word “give” means at a point in time, that He “might give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” The “spirit” here is not the Holy Spirit, this spirit refers to the human spirit. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have the human spirit, it says make this human spirit to have the following qualities: wisdom and revelation. Wisdom means knowledge of basic principles; revelation means understanding or perception of these. Revelation means you learn them; wisdom means after you’ve been acquainted with now you begin to really grasp their significance. So he says let the human spirit of these new believers have these two qualities, wisdom and revelation, in a certain area. And the area that he’s demanding wisdom and revelation is epignosis, or knowledge of Him. The “Him” does not refer to Jesus Christ, “Him” refers to God and God’s plan that has been the subject of verses 3-14.

So therefore what Paul is praying for is maturity, and he understands something about the Christian life, that maturity does not come from activity; maturity comes from taking in Bible doctrine and then expressing it in activity. You have to beware in the Christian life of getting the cart before the horse. You have to know something in order to produce the behavior pattern. This is what’s so wrong with a lot of fundamental churches, getting people to do this activity, that activity, running down the aisle, giving money, coming to Sunday School for brownie points, etc. This isn’t building maturity and just as soon as you relax these social rewards, the carrot in front of the rabbit kind of activity, as soon as you drop out the carrots and drop out the Sunday School pins and all the rest of it the whole thing falls flat on its face. Do you know why? Because there’s been no maturity built up; people have been schooled to respond to certain temporary rewards and have not been schooled to respond to Bible doctrine. The result is that we have a very weak form of Christianity, a very ineffective form and therefore thousands and thousands in this city are not being reached for Jesus Christ.

Now Paul obviously saw the difference and these prayers were a lot different than the prayers of us today, because in verse 17 he is insisting that God do a work on the inside of the believer to produce an awareness of the deep things of God. Now this isn’t just a few, three or four or five points, the doctrines that he wants these people to be aware of is the master plan of God explained in verses 3-14. Some of you who have come out of areas where you did well to learn one verse of Scripture a year would be flabbergasted to see what Paul expected new believers to know, verses 3 and following.

In verse 3 he expected them to be aware of the fact that the universe has a material and a spiritual dimension. Verse 4, he expected them to know the doctrine of election and all details pertaining to the doctrine of election. Verse 5, he expected every believer to understand the doctrine of predestination and be able to apply it in his life. Verse 6 he expected every believer to understand the word “beloved” which was a Messianic title, Messianic prophecies, he expected them to understand why they were “accepted in the beloved.” Verse 7, he expected them to know the details of the doctrine of redemption, especially as it pertains to the shed blood on the cross, especially as it pertains to eternal security as denoted by the word “forgiveness” here, “according to the riches of His grace.” He expected them in verses 9-11 to understand the angelic conflict; he expected them in verse 10 to understand that there would be an administration of the “fullness of times” which is the eternal state, that “He might gather together in one all things in Christ, those which are in heaven and which are on earth.” He expected this, this was to be the normal understanding of believers in his time.

Now some of you are saying to yourselves that’d be impossible. Why is it impossible for people living in the 20^th century who have the education that we have not to understand these things when this was commonly understood among first century people, many of whom couldn’t even read. There’s something wrong and half of it is because of our educational system, teaching people to react instead of thinking. This is a tragedy in our day. This was elementary and to be demanded on the part of believers; Paul would consider you an ignoramus unless you could stand up and explain to him the doctrine of election, predestination, etc. Now do you see what the difference is. It’s not me that’s saying this, this is Paul’s prayer, this was the normal life of the early Christian church and this is why they made an impact; they had something going for them in their minds. Obviously they had faith but faith is limited by your ignorance and the more you are ignorant the less you can believe. So therefore it follows that the more you know the more you can believe and therefore you increase your faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. It doesn’t come by frothing at the mouth, working up some inner emotion, going through some religious ritual and having a great ecstatic experience. Faith is produced by what you know and believe to be true; that is what produces faith. So Paul demanded that this understanding be given.

In verse 18-19 he gives you three effects of his prayer. In verse 17 is the prayer request, verses 18-19 are what he expected to be produced. First he said, “that,” that’s the purpose clause, “ye may know, and the word “know” means to think about, have this information accessible to the mentality of your soul that you can circulate mentally in this material and understand it. One, “what is the hope of His calling,” and this has to do with future aspects, we won’t detail these requests but I want you to see the scope of what he expected to be produced on the part of his converts. “..what the riches of the glory of His [God the Father’s] inheritance in the saints,” this has to do with various aspects of the church structure. Verse 19, “And what is the exceeding greatness of His [potential] power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power,” etc. Those are three things that he expected the Ephesian believers to understand.

And if you feel, as probably you do, I don’t doubt that many of you feel this is demanding too much of believers, this is just impossible, it’s beyond our goals today, I have news for you. This will be taught around Lubbock Bible Church and taught and taught and taught and taught until you can stand up and recite. This is the way Paul did it, he taught doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, and this is why he produced a strong generation of believers. In his day he taught five hours a day, six days a week at a place, Tyrannus’ lecture hall, outlined in the book of Acts, [Acts 19:9] and after staying there for fives hours a day, six days a week for two years, he completely and totally evangelized one entire province, the whole western section of what is now Turkey, Asia Minor in that day. You can see what an influence it had. Why? Did Paul go out knocking on everybody’s door? He did not, he stayed in one place but he taught believers and as those believers moved out in life they knew how to grasp the issues of their day; they knew how to engage an unbeliever in a conversation about Christ. They knew how to deal with people problems in their life so that their lives were a testimony to Him. And that is how the province of Asia Minor was evangelized in Paul’s day. Multiplication; Paul didn’t do it additionally, he didn’t knock on someone’s door, he won people to Christ and then these people went out and they did all the work, and that was multiplication; then they won some people and those people went out. And that is how the world was evangelized in that locale in that particular time in history. But I want you to see the fact and never lose sight that Paul spent five hours a day, six days a week. Do you know that’s 30 hours of Bible doctrine a week; how many hours do you get a week? You cannot become strong unless you take in Bible doctrine.

What does Bible doctrine do? Bible doctrine produces what is going to be known in Ephesians 3, he leads you into a label for maturity in the soul of the believer. In 3:17 is another prayer that he is praying for his new believers and he’s praying, verse 16, “That God would grant you,” believers, “according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, [17] that,” purpose, “Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” That’s not referring to salvation; this is referring to the fact that Christ have room, the words “dwell in your hearts by faith” means He’s comfortable. Did you ever have a small house and get cramped? Well, Christian has a comfortable house and the size of the house is in proportion to your maturity. Therefore the more mature you are as a believer the more comfortable Christ is in the indwelling. Now Christ always indwells, the prayer here is that He might indwell comfortably, that you might be mature enough to have large enough rooms that He can sit down and relax; that’s the point, that’s the concept. Verse 18, “That you may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, the length, the height and the depth, [19] And to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge.” Again, every believer was expected to know this material.

And then in chapter 4 he does the same thing again, in verse 11 he says that God has given certain offices to the church and these haven’t been given to lead street demonstrations; and they haven’t been given to go lobby in Congress to get all sorts of legislation passed to promote socialism and internationalism. These men God has given to teach Bible doctrine. That is their fulltime job, not mess around on the streets. In verse 11, “He gave some apostles, and some prophets, some evangelists, some pastor-teachers,” and here’s the purpose, [12] “For the maturing of the saints,” now watch the commas now because they [the pastors] don’t do the ministry, “for the maturing of the saints, for the work of the ministry,” in other words, the saints are doing the work of the ministry but in order to perform the work of the ministry they have to be matured. You are doing the works of the ministry wherever you are, housewife or on the job, on the campus, wherever you may be. So wherever you may be you are on the job for Jesus Christ. Wherever you are you are a fulltime Christian. Don’t get this inferiority complex that some missionary cranks out every once in a while: wives, you’re not in the field and you’re not serving the Lord full time.

Now we need people in the field but let me tell you something; we need less missionaries, not more. We need to get rid of about 80% of the missionaries; that’s my conclusion, we have people on the mission field that can’t add 2 and 2 and get 4 and we’re supporting these people and wonder why nothing happens. Do you know why nothing happens? For two reasons basically, the churches at home aren’t supporting them by prayer, that’s where we’re breaking down. We don’t have a prayer barrage going for them and we don’t supply the ones we’ve got adequately. So what do we do? We send out 100 missionaries and we can only supply maybe half of them, so that means half of the people out in the field don’t have enough equipment, they spend 95% of their time living and 5% evangelizing. 95% of the missionaries time is spent getting water, sewing clothes, doing all sorts of things and then we say good night, why is it nothing’s happening. It’s very simple, if you ask a person to spend 95% of their time just living the other 5% just isn’t going to cut it and that’s what’s happened; a very inefficient operation. We have missionaries in the field that are very weak in Bible doctrine. It’s not their fault, it’s that they were never taught when they were studying.

So we have a very tragic situation on the mission field, but as tragic as that may be, it still is no reason for saying that you are not in fulltime service unless you are on the mission field. You are in fulltime service wherever you are if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, period. And it doesn’t make any difference where it is, you ARE in fulltime service and that is “the work of the ministry” in verse 12. “For the edifying of the body of Christ, [13] Until we come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” and that refers to the edification of the soul.

Now let’s look at what happens when a soul matures and what characteristics come about. Volition, when volition is matured in the soul we have a pattern of yieldedness, consistent yieldedness develop where that soul has a pattern, it’s not up one day and down the next, it’s constantly yielded to the will of God, and by “yielded” I don’t mean he’s turned himself into a robot or an automaton, by yieldedness I simply mean that that person habitually prefers, seeks out and prefers the will of God for his life. There’s a consistent yieldedness about him. That’s one characteristic of maturity as regards the function of volition. As regards the functions of personal affections we have the capacity to love which is built up, you don’t get it overnight. And that grows, a capacity to love people, a capacity to love other brethren, etc.

But the most important of all of these characteristics is the third one; this is the base, this is the foundation on which all the rest of them are built, and this is the divine viewpoint framework that is gradually erected in the mentality of the soul. It means that as you grow as a Christian you begin to develop a structure that looks like this in the mentality of your mind. At the center you have God, not yourself; this means that everything starts with God. And the circle around God you begin to have Bible doctrine, so God speaks to you and you begin to learn Bible doctrine, Bible doctrine, Bible doctrine, Bible doctrine, and then in the third area of your life you have various areas and activities of your life and the Bible doctrine begins to flow out and control these activities. The general cultural activities of life, for example. Let’s take science; you’re a science student or you studied science or you read about it, it’s a tremendous thing when understood correctly.

So you start from God, you take Bible doctrine and the categories of Bible doctrine and you come out here into the field of science, control it by Bible doctrine, in other words fit it within a Scriptural framework, you take the things of science and constantly refer them back to God. So there begins a cycle here, you study history and it’s the same thing, you begin to establish categories in your mentality for analyzing history, you begin to understand dispensations, the four great civilizations of man, and you begin to sort various historical facts due to those categories. You have philosophy, same thing here, you begin to take Bible doctrine which sets up the categories of philosophy and then you study the philosophers and analyze them in the light of Scripture and you get the cycle going there. And then you have art and music and you do the same thing there. So you have all of these things involved in the general culture that are being controlled by Bible doctrine.

Now this is maturity. And yet the average fundamental church doesn’t give it a moment’s thought; just as long as you can get saved and roll down the aisle once and then come to Sunday School and be sure and give your money and that’s the sum total of Christianity. That is phony and that is settling for much less maturity than the Scriptural norm. In the New Testament the apostles expected their people to take Bible doctrine and apply it to all categories; if the Word of God can’t be applied to all categories then it’s not worth applying to any category. It’s either all or nothing, that’s the way the Scriptures are presented. Then you have other areas, some of you say well that’s fine for culture but what about the other areas of my life, I don’t think it applies.

Well let’s look at the social area of your life. You have various activities, you have fellowship with believers. This means that in the category of Christian association, whether it’s in your home, whether it’s some party somewhere, whether it’s in some church association, you recognize that every believer has a sin nature, and so when you come across somebody that’s a stinker in the group you’re not surprised; you don’t react, you don’t pick up your marbles and go home because you know this person has a sin nature just like you do. In fact, it might just be that the person is reacting to yours and you’re not reacting to his; that could be. Everyone has a sin nature so don’t be shocked when you see Christians do things and then say oh, how could so and so do that and still be a Christian. It’s very easy, he has a sin nature. How did David murder, how did he rape, how did he do all these things? Because he had a sin nature, we’re not condoning these things, we’re just saying you have to recognize the sin nature. That’s fellowship with believers.

What are some other activities of life; your fellowship with loved ones, your family, your wife, your husband, Bible doctrine controls in that area too and it ought to. You start with God, move out into the area, you begin to analyze experience in the light of Bible doctrine. So you have your fellowship with loved ones; you have fellowship with friends and you have fellowship with society in general and Bible doctrine should control how you think in all of these areas. How you evaluate people should be a function of Bible doctrine. You say that’s fine socially. Well, there’s another area of your life and that’s individual. What about individual? There’s such a thing as a job; God will lead you on your job, there’s a right job for the right man and there’s a right job for you at this moment. God has a job for you and you’re to seek His guidance in the matter; divine guidance applies just as much to finding a job as it does for finding any other thing in the Christian life. And Bible doctrine should begin to control there. The matter of sex, you should understand the role of sex in Scripture, understand the fact that God has a right woman and a right man and that sex is only for that area, for that couple. And that sex is not said to be promiscuous in Scripture, not because God doesn’t want us to have fun but because God wants to save the things that are precious for that union.

Then we find other things in our personal life; we find our possessions and we say well, do we have a Biblical attitude toward that. We find our health, do we have a Biblical attitude toward that? You see there are lots and lots of things you probably never thought of but that is what a divine viewpoint framework looks like, and that should be your goal as a Christian. If you’re moving toward maturity that’s what’s got to come first, before you have any of these other things, capacity to love and constant yieldedness. You’ve got to have a divine viewpoint framework in which you can think, in which you can analyze, in which you can go into various activities of life and see the will of God. Don’t pray for the will of God if you haven’t taken time to find it out in the Word. So this has got to be set up in the mentality of your soul, that’s maturity, a divine viewpoint framework.

Now that’s one thing but there’s another thing that you can do and spoil the whole thing and that’s what Solomon is doing in the book of Ecclesiastes and this is why he has this attitude of sour grapes, is because he has not built a divine viewpoint framework in his soul and with the result that he has in his mind a vacuum. Here’s the mentality, let’s just take mentality; when mentality is not functioning and is not filled with the divine viewpoint framework then there’s a vacuum produced and that vacuum sucks in all sorts of thing; it sucks in religion for one thing. Religion is increasing in our day; church attendance is decreasing but religion is increasing and that’s very bad because the more religion comes into this country the worse off we are going to be. Christianity is not a religion, it’s a personal relationship with Christ. And yet we have religion, religion, religion, religion, and this is one of the great things that’s going to ruin us as a nation. Religion always destroys, religion is always filling the soul with a lot of human viewpoint, that’s all it is, human viewpoint including human good. That’s religion and religion is sucked into the mentality, even of Christians who have no Bible doctrine in here.

Your mind craves things, it’s putting pressure on you to erect something inside and if you don’t take the time and the effort to erect a divine viewpoint framework then your mind will act as a vacuum and suck in anything that comes along. These are suckers, spiritual suckers, and they are suckers for religion, they go for human viewpoint, human good, they might go for legalism or they might go for licentiousness but whatever it is they suck this stuff in and they’ve got a pile of facts; constantly sucking stuff in, one idea after another, no organization, just chaos. And this is why Christianity suffers from religious BO, it stinks, and that’s why it stinks is because we have had people suck in religion and human good, human good, human good, human good, which is good in itself except it’s done with the wrong mental attitude. So this is what goes on.

Turn to Ecclesiastes and we’ll see why it is that Solomon has this sour grapes attitude. He has just come to two great conclusions. You must understand these conclusions to see why he is going to say what he says today. In the first section of this passage, 3:1-15 he has come to the conclusion that there is a purpose in the universe but it is an unknown purpose, he can’t find it out. And since he can’t find out the basic purpose of the universe, he has nothing on which to build his divine viewpoint framework in the mentality of his soul, therefore he is going to settle for chaos, because he has nothing to build this purpose, your mind craves a framework and he can’t find out what the framework is so he just settles for chaos, or tries to erect a room over here and organize a few facts over here, organize something over here but there’s no union, there’s nothing that ties it all together. So this is the first thing that smashes him.

The second thing that bothers him is in 3:16-4:3, where he has made the simple observation that there is inexperienced justice in the world, that you can talk morality all you want to but there’s one thing that always comes before your eyes; the world is not moral and people get faked out, and there’s always the poor person and the weak person that gets tromped on. And Solomon sees that, he’s an honest man. And he recognizes this fact and this disturbs him tremendously.

So in verses 4 through the end of this chapter Solomon is going to give us various responses to this problem. He is going to smash up some panaceas that people usually crank out to meet the problem. Some people go as far as Solomon; some people recognize yes, I don’t know, I can’t see the overall purpose, I can’t find it out. So they are minus purpose; they also recognize there’s no justice right at the moment; minus justice. But then they start in with a human good system and here’s what some people try to do and they’re going to say three things. Solomon is going to deal with each of these three objections and he’s going to smash those too. Solomon is in a very smashing mood. So in verse 4-6 is his dealing with the first panacea that people crank out and that is, look, we do not know the purpose of the universe and all these great things but there’s one thing you certainly can settle upon, and that is take pride in your workmanship. So he’s going to deal with that, the pride in workmanship theory. And that is, whatever it is in your life, just take pride in doing a good job. [tape is inaudible for a short time] Solomon is going to say it’s stupid to say that if you don’t have any purpose.

The second thing Solomon deals with is in verses 7-12 and in verses 7-12 he deals with another theory, social adjustment; what we have to do is get along with John Doe and get all the social adjustment courses, life adjustment courses, and mans’ problem is that he can’t get along with other people and so all we have to do is forget about content, forget about teaching content in our courses, and if a person wants to sit in the classroom and finger paint, let him finger paint, and if somebody wants to carve wood, let him carve wood, and another person wants to do something else, let him do it, and we’ll all get together and have social adjustment. Solomon is going to deal with this problem and knock that out.

And then in verses 13-16 he’s going to deal with another thing and that is, well, it doesn’t matter, pride in workmanship or social adjustment, what really matters is making a name for yourself—fame; be a great name in history.

Now these are three common panaceas that people try to put forward to solve their problems when they can’t find a solid base for doing something else. Solomon is an honest man; don’t think Solomon is good in doing this, he’s good in one sense in that he’s honest and sees through these panaceas. Solomon is going all the way down into the pit of despair and he’s not stopping on some snag on the way. A lot of people see negative purpose and negative justice but then they hang up on one of these things and they say well, I see this, I’m going to teach my kids it doesn’t matter what they believe, I don’t care what they believer but my kids are going to learn pride in work. And Solomon says that’s a lot of bologna, if they don’t have the Biblical framework there’s no sense teaching them pride in work. Or we can say, like John Dewey, it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re adjusted. So he’s going to deal with that problem.

Now in verses 4-6 he starts to deal with this problem of pride in workmanship. Verse 4, “Again, I considered all travail, and every right work,” now “every right work” is the word in the Hebrew which means craftsmanship and it has to do with this workmanship, it means a carpenter skill or something. The word looks like this, kothar or kosar really, one of the great gods of the ancient world who was the god of craftsmanship was Kothar, the “th” in Ugaritic is equal to the “s” in Hebrew. So that’s the same name even though it’s spelled differently. So you have this great god Kothar, and Kothar is a god of craftsmanship. And this word was not translated correctly in the King James, they didn’t know what the word meant; it is craftsmanship. So, Solomon looks at all the job, all the activity that men are doing and especially the craftsmanship that people are doing, the activities looked at from the standpoint of craftsmanship. And then he makes a conclusion, and here’s his observation, “that for this a man is envied by his neighbor.” Unfortunately we have to translate this differently again; if you want to check the translation I suggest you see the RSV, they have correctly translated it. It literally reads: “I have seen” this activity, etc. and he concludes, “it is the envy of a man over his neighbor.”

What does he mean by that? He says is if I look out on the world and I look carefully and I take my rose-colored glasses off, and look at it very carefully I begin to see something. All this jazz about pride and workmanship, do you know what it amounts to? Keeping up with the Joneses. What it amounts to is that I want to excel over my fellow man and that’s all that motivates it, simply pride over the person that is working next to me, that’s all. I get a higher grade in school, not because I’m really interested in learning more, it’s just that I want to get the highest grade in the class, that’s all. So this is what he points out and I think it’s a very profound observation. He dispenses with all the pious words about craftsmanship and says listen, if you really want to look at it, all it amounts to is people just stomping on somebody else, and it’s just one man envying his neighbor, and he concludes his observation, “This is also vanity and preoccupation with wind, [vexation of spirit.]”

Now Solomon here points out a problem that the communists have long seen but the communists have made the wrong conclusion. The communists have looked on the capitalist system and said oh, you’re capitalists, all your system does it promote greed, and all your system does is pit one man against another and so they sit here and they make this work, whoever make the most, whoever can out produce his neighbor is successful in the capitalist system. And the communists are right in one sense; the communists are right in seeing the selfishness that exists in capitalism. However they’re wrong in saying that the selfishness comes from the economic system. The selfishness comes from the old sin nature and you can’t root out the old sin nature, therefore capitalism is the best system going for resolving the problems of a sinful society. Communism, do you know what happens to communism? In communism and socialism you get a society like this and you have a big hierarchy called a bureaucracy up here and their sin natures control. So what do you want? Do you want a lot of sin natures controlling in sort of a chaotic fashion or do you want a few big ones controlling; that’s the choice. And capitalism has resolved the problem.

We never defend capitalism by saying it’s perfect; never. Capitalism is only a means of living, co-existing together with sin natures. However, the communists can’t solve the sin nature problem, therefore we don’t listen to them. All this jazz about organized society, all it does is just put one sin nature over another one, that’s all. It doesn’t solve anybody’s problem. In fact, it makes it worse because now you’ve got people up here and everybody else is reduced to a common denominator; the lowest common denominator is a moron. So to make everybody equal we reduce them to morons. This year Uncle Sam does 100 things for you; ten years from now he does a thousand things for you, and then he does everything for you and now everybody’s a moron and now we have true communism because everybody is equal. Wouldn’t you love that? Everybody is equal; everybody is equally moronic, that’s what it means, except… there’s always the exception, except big bosses up here. That’s what communists never tell you, the Marxist never tells you this, that he always insists that he’s going to be above the common denominator. Everybody else will be on the lowest common denominator except him, he’s going to be the boss. So it’s just power lust; what really is behind a lot of communism and socialism is simply, pure and simple just power lust. We’ve had power lust all history and it’s just a lust to control other people, that’s all. So this is power lust on the part of the left wing and the part of communism.

So Solomon sees back in his day the problem, that competition does spring from jealousy. Competition does spring from envy. Now he’s going to quote a proverb, and in verse 4 he quotes a proverb but in a strange way. Remember I told you that you have to be careful in this book because Solomon has a little funny technique he likes to pull off. He likes to take a Scripture and then he likes to refute it. He did that once before; remember in 2:13-14 he quoted two proverbs and then he refuted them. He’s out of fellowship and Christians always do this when they’re out of fellowship. Oh, the promises don’t work, I tried that; 1 John 1:9, I tried that, it doesn’t work; Romans 8:28 doesn’t work for me. How come you’re the first person in the universe it hasn’t worked for? Where’d you drop out of? The Bible always works, the problem is you don’t.

Now here in Ecclesiastes 2:13 we have one proverb, “wisdom excels folly,” see he just picks up a quote from his day. “Wisdom excels folly as far as light excels darkness,” that’s one proverb. “The wise man’s eyes are in his head but the fool walks in darkness,” the benefit of being wise over being foolish. But then he adds, verse 14, he spoils the whole thing, “but,” it shouldn’t be “and,” it’s adversative, “but, I myself perceived also that one event happens to them all,” he’s not impressed in other words. So he’s quoted a proverb, verse 13, quoted a proverb, verse 14, but then he says, “but I perceive” that it’s not true. Now do you see what Solomon is doing; this is rationalism now, taking Scripture out of context and trying to refute it.

Come over to 4:5 now; what he’s doing here is quoting another proverb and this is the proverb of the man who has got this panacea. You see up here is this man and he has a panacea and the panacea is pride in workmanship. That’s his panacea; he says listen, I don’t care about the big questions of life, that’s all philosophical, but what really counts is that when you have a job, do it well. How often have you heard that, it doesn’t matter what you believe, it doesn’t matter about these other things, as long as you have a job and do it well that’s all that counts. So Solomon begins to attack it, and he already has in verse 4 and he’s just shouted the thing, he says listen, that’s a bunch of malarkey. You don’t have to be a genius to see that all that business is is just a pious way of excusing your own envy, that’s all it is. You want to outsell somebody else, that’s just a pious cover up for it.

To then this other person comes back in verse 5 and says, “The fool folds his hands together, and eats his own flesh.” You see, Solomon speaks in verse 4, he also speaks in verse 5 but he’s rephrasing this man’s complaint, a man would respond “but Solomon, listen, we’ve got to work, if you don’t work you starve.” So Solomon, you’re wrong, you shouldn’t just dump the work, you’ve got to work in order to live and so he says “the fool folds his hands together,” that’s a synonym for laziness. I don’t think you need proof of it but if you do it’s in Proverbs 6:10 where it’s used similarly, “folds his hands” is an idiom for laziness, “and eats his own flesh,” that is an idiom for destroying himself. Turn to Isaiah 49:26; we have this statement made and it clearly shows the usage of this idiom. God is speaking judgment upon a people of Isaiah’s time. He says, “I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh, and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine; and all flesh will know that I, the LORD,” and what this is, Isaiah is simply saying, voicing Jehovah’s condemnation of the society, He says I’m going to destroy it, and in order to phrase the destruction, God uses this idiom, “they shall eat their own flesh.” Now that’s what’s meant back in Ecclesiastes 4, the fool is a lazy man, “he folds his hands and he destroys himself.” Now that’s true, that’s a true statement but what Solomon is going to point out is that’s now why you’re working; the reason why you’re working is not just to satisfy the needs of life, the reason you’re working is to go beyond just the needs of life, you want to excel and show yourself how great you are against another person.

Please don’t get me wrong here, we’re not knocking excelling but it’s excelling for the wrong reason; I’ll deal with the right reason in a little bit. But the wrong reason, Solomon is pointing out, people go to work sheerly to excel over someone else. And this is false, in verse 5, “The fool folds his hands together, and eats his own flesh.” It’s false, Solomon says, to quote that on your behalf because that’s not why you’re working. You’re working because you want to excel over someone, you’ve got enough money to buy all the food, but you want more money. Why? To impress people. And that’s why you work, you’re just working out of envy of someone else. You’re down here in society and you see the Joneses and you want to climb up there and you set up your income so you get it up here and now you can look down your long nose at the Joneses. That’s why you’re working, he says, it’s not just to satisfy hunger.

And then in verse 6, his counterpoint to verse 5; verse 5 is the quote that his opponent would say, the justification for work is to eat, and Solomon says okay, but verse 6, “Better is an handful with quietness, than both hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.” “Better is an open handful,” you have to see this because it’s a play on words here. The word “handful” is the Hebrew word which means open palm; it’s relaxed. He says “better is a relaxed handful of quietness,” not “with quietness,” it’s “of quietness,” it means that you have the hand out and in the palm of the hand there’s something and he calls that thing quietness. This is an autonomy in the sense that part stands for the whole, quietness is how that work was gotten.

In other words, your accomplishments; here is a person, let’s take person A and person B. Person A is working this hard, and he’s producing enough to get along and he’s relaxed, not tense about it, he produces enough to get by. And Solomon says that’s a lot better, work with a relaxed hand, an open palm, “than two handfuls,” this is the Hebrew dual ending on the next word, it’s the word “hand” with dual ending, but instead of the word “open palm” it means “closed fist.” “Better is one relaxed handful of work” where you’re straining yourself, “than two handfuls,” tense, tight, and you can’t settle down and relax, and so he quotes this back against the person. He says better is it to just work and get by than be a climber and go all the way up and just be tense.

We can see a counterpart to this in our own day. We have seen in this country in the past 30-40 years a generation that lived through the depression; a generation that fought to eat during the depression, a generation that knows what it is not to have food on the table, and therefore that generation has worked to produce something for their children that is worthwhile. And now their children have come along and said I don’t want your material things, I don’t care about it, I’m going to have my own hell-raising game, etc. There’s two things you want to observe about this; one thing by and large, and I’m not speaking of everybody in the depression generation, obviously, but the depression generation is marked by a marked lack of spirituality. What happened? Something happened between 1920 and 1940 in this country. I was talking to some pastors about this and we all noticed the same thing; if you take a cross-section of a congregation age wise, in many churches where the Word of God is being taught you get this distribution: you have a tremendous interesting in young people and then you have the older generation, but there’s a middle generation that’s missing. You see this distribution show up in congregation after congregation. This is why in our own generation we are having to depend on the young people because we have to mature these people to the point where they can move in and take over leadership. This generation that is in the middle bracket is the generation that grew up during the modernist/fundamentalist controversy, when the churches were racked with apostasy and splits, etc. and this may have something to do with it but something was missing in that generation.

So in our own day we have this middle generation versus the young people and they say there’s a generation gap. Well it’s not just a generation gap; we’ve always had generation gaps but there’s something different that’s happened. There are many things that happened but one of the things that happened is that in America the middle generation was not very sound in its Bible teaching. Now I’m speaking of the generation en toto now, versus the older generation that preceded them. You had a marked decline in that era and with the result that they had material things, possessions, they had material things that they had gotten since the depression, but their young people had never been taught the spiritual framework, they had no divine viewpoint framework and so all they see is this craving that Solomon sees. And they see verse 4 and they say bologna, all your competition is is just envy over someone else, this is a dog eat dog business world and I’m tired of it and you’re not going to get me to go into it. And that’s the attitude.

And they would say with Solomon in verse 6, “Better is an handful with quietness, than both hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.” Solomon’s remarks just bear beautifully upon our own generation… beautifully, he’s saying exactly what the young people are saying today, EXACTLY, as they look upon the middle generation that is climbing, climbing, climbing, desperately to get things, things, things, that they themselves never had. And ye tin the end all they have is vanity and wind, desperation, because they haven’t put first thing first, largely. And this is again a generalization, so don’t necessarily take it personally.

Now let’s come over to the New Testament and say how do we resolve this. Let’s go to the divine viewpoint framework. We have God at the center, we have Bible doctrine that we learn and pick up, and around this we have the various activities of life. We have culture, science, history, philosophy, art, music, we have the social things, we have fellowship with believers, with loved ones, we have fellowship with friends in society. We have the individual needs, we have a job, we have sex, we have possessions, we have health. Now, take one of these things—job, and let’s set up a divine viewpoint framework of saying look, here’s God, here’s Bible doctrine, what does Bible doctrine have to say about my job. Turn to Ephesians 6 and pick up the categories that have to do with employment from the standpoint of the Word of God; labor and management.

Ephesians 6:5, get used to thinking this way because this is the way God wants you to think if you’re a mature Christian. He wants you to be able to take a problem of life, here we’re starting with job and we’re moving from the job toward God through Bible doctrine. We started with the job question; now what do we do? We don’t just give our opinions about I like this kind of job and I don’t think we should do it this way, I think we should be a capitalist, etc. We’re not giving opinions, we’re going to Bible doctrine. Let’s see it; Eph. 6:5, this is addressed to the employees in the day, known as servants. By large there wasn’t any employees, most people were slaves, however the principle still holds true for our culture. “Slaves, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh.” Notice Paul says something, mental attitude, your boss on the job is not your spiritual boss, he is only with regard to certain details of life. And therefore he doesn’t run your life and hasn’t got a right to run your life. He has jurisdiction over certain details of your life and if you want to work for him then you do things a certain way, but he is not to dictate how you eat, breathe, etc. He’s out of line if he does.

“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh,” a Christian’s master is Jesus Christ, not a human employer. All right, “according to the flesh, with fear and trembling in singleness of heart,” why? “Fear and trembling” toward him? NO! “as unto Christ, [6] Not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” Now there’s a play on words; in verse 6 you see the words “servants of Christ.” Compare that with the word in verse 5 that begins the verse, “servants.” So Paul sets up a dichotomy here; it’s not really a dichotomy, it’s a contrast. Here you have “masters,” that’s the employer today; down here you have “slaves,” that’s the employee today. But he’s saying look, there’s another dimension to this thing, up here you have Christ and here you are. Now he says, when you do a job you have a greater master than your employer; you have Jesus Christ and you work as though He were your employer. Now do you see what that does in the mental attitude? See, it completely changes the thing.

And that was Paul was getting at, was that these servants… by the way, you think you might have a nasty employer, imagine what these slaves…these were Christian slaves and notice what he doesn’t say: slaves get together and at five o’clock we’re going to have a demonstration in the streets, we’re going to march up and down with placards saying “down with slavery.” Where do you read that in the New Testament? You don’t because Christianity never operates by mob action. Christian operates through the dynamics of spirituality, never through mob action. Wherever you see clergy leading riots today you are looking at apostates. You are looking sometimes at Christians who are so far out of fellowship that it’ll probably be the rapture before they get back with it again. So disregard any clergy that are involved in this kind of activity, they are out of line and they cannot substantiate their position on the basis of God’s Word and never even try.

So here verse 6, “Not with eyeservice,” this is a denial, you see, here’s what Solomon didn’t see, Solomon was right when he was looking at life from the human viewpoint as far as other people. Say, here’s a man in Solomon’s time and here’s Solomon, both are operating on human viewpoint, however, Solomon is more consistent with his human viewpoint. This other man says yeah, I’m operating on human viewpoint and then he covers human viewpoint up with a little coat called human good. And he says I don’t believe Bible doctrine and I’m not going to accept Christ as my Savior and I don’t go for this jazz about finding God’s will for my life, but I believe in doing a good job and I believe and my father believed and taught me that you should do a good job if you’re going to do any job and all the rest of it. That’s fine, if you’re a Christian. But what Solomon says is that without the Christian framework it’s a lot of malarkey, it doesn’t make a bit of sense. Why should I, if God doesn’t exist and if I don’t have a relationship with Him, why bother with a good job? Nonsense, I’m just going to do enough to get by, that’s all, that’s what the hippies do, just enough to get by, and they’re perfectly right given the fact that you’re operating on human viewpoint. If human viewpoint is the system which you’re operating on, the hippies are more consistent because they are doing just enough to get by. You say yeah but it’s wrong. Yeah, but it’s wrong only because the Word of God is true, that’s why. And you have no right to object to somebody that adopts Solomon’s philosophy unless you confront them at the [can’t understand word] issue which is accept Christ as your Savior, that’s the basic issue.

So this is what Paul means, he brings in an element that Solomon never thought of, “not with eyeservice,” means you’re impressing someone, you’re not doing this to impress other people, you’re doing this as unto the Lord, and this means when you are on the job somewhere and you could get away with slack time, and you could do all sorts of things and you know your boss would never see it, what do you do? You do it as unto the Lord because Jesus Christ is omniscient and He knows. So therefore you do your job as unto the Lord. This is a fantastic testimony and this is what I mean when the divine viewpoint is what we need in this country because when people have mature souls that have this divine viewpoint framework in the mentality of their soul it means that on the job they’re a testimony and they don’t have to buttonhole people every time they walk into the door. Do you know why? Because people are going to listen to them. People don’t listen to buttonholers who don’t back up what they say with how they live. But in this kind of a situation on the job, and I’ve seen this work again and again and again, where people have their mouths shut until they show the fruits of spirituality on the job and then people are prepared to listen, and then when they say the reason why I do this is not because of you, it’s because of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, those words mean something then. This is how you have an impact on society. You don’t have it by mouthing around without building first mature souls who are able to handle all there is of life.

Let’s go back to Ephesians, what Paul is saying here is that these people are acting as believers consistent, not with human viewpoint but an entirely new thing, divine viewpoint. Divine viewpoint, I’m a believer and this makes Christ my employer. How is Christ your employer? Because if you’re a Christian you should have asked the Lord for guidance before you got on the job. If you’re in a job then that job should be where God led you and if it’s not where God led you then you ought to ask God to lead you somewhere else. But if God has led you to that job then He is your employer; He got you the job. If God wants you in a job and you’re willing to go with Him, He’ll get you there and it doesn’t matter how many people stand between you and the job, God will get you the job. It’s the same thing as everything else, if God doesn’t want you there then you shouldn’t want the job, no matter how much it pays. So this is what Paul means when Christ is your employer, He has led you there and if He has led you there then He wants you to work there with the right attitude. And if your attitude is not right you’d better do some checking spiritually.

Let’s see one more case in the New Testament where this comes out, Colossians 3:22, same thing, but the review is beneficial. “Servants, obey in all things your master, according to the flesh, not with eyeservice as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God.” Now do you see the three viewpoints clearly. First you have the hypocrite that Solomon is attacking, who doesn’t believe in spiritual things, who may or may not be a Christian, who could care less about diving guidance, who doesn’t connect Jesus Christ with his job; there he stands. And he’s the fellow that says I’m going to do a good job anyway, and Solomon says are you kidding, do you know why you’re doing a good job? To brown-nose your employer, that’s why, let’s put it straight, that’s the only reason why you’re doing a good job, you just want to climb the ladder, that’s all. Then there’s Solomon and he would correspond to the people in our day who are sort of drop-outs and they say listen, what’s the deal here, if I don’t believe in Christ and I don’t see His relationship, then why scramble, it’s not worth the effort, I’m going to relax and get by, if I have to get by on a can of beans a day I’ll get by on a can of beans but at least I’m happy.

Then you have the third person and he’s a believer and he has a divine viewpoint framework, he has a mature believer and this person is going to do a job, and let’s imagine a conversation. And so Solomon comes along on the job and there you are, you’re the believer and you’ve taken in Bible doctrine so you have a divine viewpoint framework in the mentality of your soul. So now you sit on the job and Solomon comes along, and we’ll take Saul, he’s a clod in the Old Testament, we’ll pick him up, and we’ll bring Saul along and Saul will come up to you and say I notice you’re doing a real good job, and this is so impressive, think of the promotions you can get out of this job, think of all the rewards, etc. And what you’ll do is cut him down fast, you’ll say listen, there’s not a man in this plant that’s worth my job and there’s not a man in this organization that I work as unto; I work as unto the Lord Jesus Christ, I don’t work for man, He is my employer, He got me on the job and I’m doing my job as unto Him, not as unto the employers of this organization. Now you respect them but you respect them because Christ got you there and it’s your relationship with Him that’s superior.

Now you come to the third part, here’s Solomon and he comes along and says yeah, but you’re really just doing it as unto the employer. You say no I’m not. You’ve got an answer for both of them and you come back to him and say no, I’m not doing this to impress this man, I realize that a lot of other people on the job are, but I’m not doing my job to impress people, I’m doing my job as unto the Lord. That is what I mean by divine viewpoint framework and this is what Solomon means in the book of Ecclesiastes when he says that “all is vanity.” He means that if you don’t have the divine viewpoint framework in your soul all is vanity and the best thing for you to do is just drop out and get by because that’s the most relaxed way to live, it doesn’t involve and tenseness, at least a minimum of it, you don’t have to rub your hands to the bone, etc. you can just relax and just get by. Today it’s so easy, just go down and apply for welfare and just get by, the government will conveniently provide for you, tell you how to go to bed, when to blow your nose etc. but at least it’s a relaxed life. You can do that, that would make sense if everything is vanity.

But everything is not vanity because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and Biblical Christianity is true. And therefore the issue for you this morning is have you personally trusted Christ or not. And if you are a Christian are you getting with Bible doctrine or not, or are you messing around with religion. With our heads bowed.