Ecclesiastes Lesson 12
Solomon Smashes HVP Purpose, “Social Adjustment” and “Fame” - 4:7-16
In the book of Ecclesiastes we have the thoughts of Solomon. Solomon is a very miserable believer. The reason he is miserable is because somewhere along the line he has gotten out of fellowship. Solomon became a believer sometime during his life; the moment you accept Jesus Christ you become a Christian, God puts you in union with Christ. That top circle never changes, this is your legal position, you never have to worry about losing it; you are “in Christ,” the Bible says you are elect. However, there’s a bottom circle and this is the sphere of your experience from day to day, week to week. At any given moment you are in the circle or out of the circle. Solomon was out of the circle, he got out of the circle through various activities, he had various lust patterns that are developed in the soul, and through the acquisition of wealth, women, wine and song Solomon had explored a system of human happiness.
Solomon’s point was how can I be happy though out of fellowship; how can I obtain happiness in my life without following the will of the Lord. So Solomon tried everything and in the section we are studying, chapters 3-4, he gives us his reflections on man’s position in the universe. They are very discouraging, very pessimistic. This is the only book in the Scripture where you have such pessimism. The reason is that God the Holy Spirit wants you to see that out of the will of God for your life is nothing but misery, and it’s to strip off the self-hypnosis that a lot of people have that I can be happy, and I don’t care, I’m going to live the way I want to and I’m going to get happiness, etc. Now that’s wrong and Solomon wants to point this out and this is why this book is so discouraging. It leaves the non-Christian with zero, absolutely nothing.
We said last time, beginning in the section of 4:4 that although in chapter 3 he had discussed the problem of an undiscoverable purpose in the universe, in other words, he knew that the universe had a purpose but he couldn’t find it and so this left him in despair. Obviously if you can’t find a purpose in the universe you have no purpose for your life; you may not think so but your life as an individual means absolutely nothing unless the universe in which you live has a purpose to it. The whole must have a meaning before the parts have meaning. If the universe really doesn’t have a purpose there’s much sense of you being around or me being around. The other thing that Solomon has seen is that there is an unexperienced justice, in other words, that man, on earth, in society knows of moral principles but he never can experience these things, they never work out. Somebody is always getting clobbered by somebody else; there’s always somebody that’s suffering and someone that’s miserable.
And he concluded this section, in 4:3, when he said “Better is he that both they, who hath not yet been, who has not yet seen the evil work that is done under the sun” it’s simply saying that it’s better that you hadn’t been born; and you come into this world without a purpose, without justice, yet you have these things inside, in the deep innermost sections of your being and your soul you cry out for meaning and purpose. In the innermost areas of your soul you cry out for moral things, you cry out that there must be a moral standard somewhere. Sometimes you suppress this, but if I came down there and belted you in the face you’d feel sorry and it wouldn’t be just because I had hurt you; it’d be because that I had violated your rights and you’d stick up for your rights and maybe I’d get belted back. But your reaction would be more than just because I hit you, because unconsciously or even consciously you’re aware that you have certain rights. And you have this thing and yet you feel frustrated because these rights are never fully observed in the world.
So now beginning in verse 4, running through the end of chapter 4, Solomon is dealing with two theories that people try to advance for meaning in life. They operate on a non-Christian basis, they have thrown out the idea that they can find the ultimate purpose for things, they’ve thrown out the idea that there is justice always in the world and that this justice will be finally realized. With this gone it doesn’t leave you with much. You’ve got to see this, that the non-Christian is left with nothing. I understand some people were disturbed with my statement that if I were not a Christian I would be a revolutionary, and it’s very obvious, if I were not a Christian there is no purpose for life so you might as well destroy everything that exists because there’s no purpose in it. Now it’s either one or the other. Some of you don’t realize that it is an either/or, but that’s the point. That’s what Solomon is trying to make here, it’s either one or the other; either you have the purpose that Biblical Christianity gives you or you have no purpose.
So Solomon has to deal with the problem, and verses 4-6 he dealt with the first theory that people try to put forth. The theory is well, we can’t answer the big questions but nevertheless, have pride in your workmanship. So in verses 4-6 he deals with this problem, and he says listen, it doesn’t take a genius to see the reason most people have pride in their workmanship is just that they are trying to show up their neighbor, that’s all. And this is what he says in verse 4, he says, “Again, I considered all travail, and all craftsmanship” literally, “that it is the envy of a man over his neighbor,” corrected translation. Solomon is not an idiot and he’s bluntly honest, and he says look, I’m Joe Blow here and I have no purpose for life and someone comes along and says don’t sweat it, just have pride in your workmanship and everything will be all right. Sort of like the theory that you hear again and again, it doesn’t matter what you believe, it’s how you live. Nonsense! How you believe determines everything. So here in verses 4-6 Solomon knocks this position, as we saw, he pretty well dismantles the whole thing by his explanation.
Now in verses 7-16 he’s going to deal with two more theories that are advanced and are being advanced today to give people a prop to live by. Theory #2, verses 7-12, and this is the theory of companionship or social adjustment. Now, this companionship, the idea is that look, all I have to do is live with people, work with people, and some how I benefit. Verse , “The I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun.” In other words, he came back to this human viewpoint that he had been considering before and now he’s going to pick up the second theory, the companionship theory, and as he looks at the companionship theory, he is going to, in verses 8-9, give you their arguments. In other words, he’s going to state the argument in verses 8-9, and then in verses 10-12 he’s going to refute the argument, and he does it in a very sarcastic and very clever way.
But in verses 8-9, this is a rephrase of the theory, and this is what the people say. “There is one alone, and there is not a second,” in other words, he say look upon the single person, look upon the person that’s trying to work alone, apart from the group, and he’s isolated as an individual; no man is an island, this is a theory, verse 8, no man is an island, so therefore verse 9, they’d better get together and have a group, social adjustment. The point here is not so much what you do that counts, it’s the crowd that you’re with that counts. And even though, obviously on Solomon’s basis all you’re doing is playing marbles as far as significance is concerned, you have none, but nevertheless, if you’re going to play marbles you might as well play with someone else, it keeps the boredom down. And this is the theory, that work benefits by your social adjustment with other people. Now we’re not denying that there’s a truth to this, but that’s not adequate reason to live. If it turns out that the universe is meaningless, that God really isn’t there, that He doesn’t take an interest in me, then I don’t see why I should bother with a group, I can get along perfectly well by myself; in fact it’s easier to get along with myself than it is with more than one person so why not just relax and have a good time all by myself.
So in verse 8 he is going to rephrase the argument and this is the argument the other side is presenting, namely, that it’s not good to be alone… not good to be alone and what you have to do is get together with somebody and work. “There is one alone, and there is not a second,” in other words, here’s the person who is absolutely alone and doesn’t have a companion; “he has neither child nor brother,” so he doesn’t have anybody in his immediate family, “yet there is no end of all his labor,” in other words, this man is never satisfied, he’s alone and he can’t be satisfied, he’s constantly trying to fill the vacuum that is there by doing things. So here’s this man’s soul and inside he has a vacuum, and this vacuum sucks in various things as we have seen, it sucks in religion, religion is always sucked in because Christianity basically is not a religion; religion is the idea of man doing good works to earn his way to heaven. Christianity is Jesus Christ died on the cross for you. But he sucks in religion, he sucks in good works, he sucks in a lot of things and he’s really trying to fill in that spiritual vacuum, to give himself an excuse for living.
And so they say here,” yet is there no end of all his labor,” this man who is single, this man who is working alone can’t possibly fill up that vacuum; now that’s a true observation. There’s only one problem, the vacuum isn’t going to be filled up by group therapy either; the vacuum is only going to be filled by Jesus Christ but they don’t see that. They say man has a vacuum, man is dissatisfied, and the way around it is to get together, then you don’t feel so lonely. It’s like these people that can’t be alone without turning music on or something, they just can’t be along. There’s something wrong if you can’t be alone with yourself. But these people say no, you can’t enjoy yourself being alone because they’ve got a misdiagnosis; they’ve got this spiritual vacuum in the soul but that is a spiritual vacuum, it’s not a social vacuum, it’s a spiritual thing. And so the theory goes, “there is no end of all his labor,” in other words this man keeps working, keeps working, keeps working, trying to keep himself busy.
“…neither is he satisfied with riches, neither says he, For whom am I a laborer,” literally, “and whom am I bereaving my soul of good?” The word “bereave” is the Hebrew participle, the Hebrew participle is the motion picture tense, it’s action which continues, “am I bereaving my should of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is sore [heavy] travail.” Now this is the statement of these people; they say look, the problem is that you can’t be happy alone and the reason you can’t be happy alone is because you have this vacuum, the vacuum can be filled by the group, and so we have the group adjustment. This is very similar, incidentally, to John Dewey. John Dewey [can’t understand word] the idea that education did not consist of passing content from teacher to pupil, it rather consisted of life adjustment. Now of course if you define life adjustment he’s right, but you can’t get life adjustment unless you have content passed from teacher to pupil and that is content. And that’s where classical education, Biblical education, differs from John Dewey. John Dewey could care less whether you get any content because the content is irrelevant; if there’s no such thing as absolute truth then what you learn is relative and I can learn black is red and you can learn black is white and we can all get together and have a happy time, it doesn’t really matter whether black is red or black is white or black is black, it doesn’t make any difference, all these things are irrelevant.
But always the Bible stresses content, content, content, content, man has a brain and he has to have something in the brain with which to think. And this is why dualistic education is one of the great destroyers of mentality today. This is why we have, to a large degree, a generation that can’t think, a generation that is anti-historical, a generation that has no conscience of what has gone on in the past because we no longer stress history, geography and these things; we are no longer putting content in their minds in order to give them material to think with, and so after a while the brain atrophies. If you look at the boob tube long enough you become a boob and that’s what’s happening. We have people that are not getting content, so we have brain minus content equals idiot and that’s what happens, and eventually the whole society goes this way.
This is one reason why it is very difficult to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ today. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not an emotional experience. The gospel of Jesus Christ is certain divine truths and it demands people to stop and think through and if people cannot think they obviously have problems when it comes to the presentation of the gospel. I would dare say that the people in the book of Acts could think over an extended period of time longer than most of us here this morning. For example, we know that Paul taught in the lecture hall of Tyrannus for about four to five hours a day, six days a week for two years when he evangelized the entire province of Asia Minor. Over a two year period he had totally fulfilled the great commission and he did it by constant teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching, content, content, content, content until he had transformed the way the people think and if you transform the way the people think you transform the people. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” And Paul’s technique and his method was to give them content, not experience. Experience flows out of the content but you have to have content first.
So here in verse 8 we have the idea of a loner, and the loner can’t be happy, so goes the theory. So the answer is, verse 9, and Solomon quotes one of the proverbs, “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.” In other words the proverb goes that two lonely people get together, we’ll have a lonely hearts club and now we’ll be happy. That’s the way a lot of churches operate; the problem for youth is to get them together and have all sorts of social functions. Now social functions are fine but you can’t have social functions if you first don’t teach them some Bible doctrine or they’ll have nothing to socialize about. Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts are fine, they’re doing a wonderful job in their field, so let’s just leave it up to them. But in the New Testament the emphasis is on content of information, transferred from the Word of God, which is the teacher, the Word of God, the Bible, over to the believer’s brain, content. And that’s how worship occurs; worship is a response to received content. But the emphasis is always on content.
And verse 9, when they advocate this theory that “two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor,” the good reward refers to the filling of this vacuum. In other words, the theory goes that you can make people satisfied and they’ll be relaxed eventually if you get them in the right group, get them to meet the right person. A lot of people have this theory, oh, if I could only meet the right man, or the right woman, etc. and of course what they fail to realize is that they meet the right person and they’re still miserable; the reason is that they haven’t settled their own problems. You can meet all the wonderful people in the world and it’s not going to solve any problem until you solve your own inner problems spiritually and then you can even stand to be around people. It’s tremendous. Once you solve your own problems you can relax in a crowd. So verse 9 is a proverb that Solomon quotes from the other side, “two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.”
Now Solomon is going to do a very interesting thing here, he’s going to quell this thing by shredding it with explanation. So from verses 10-12 he does the same thing, he’s going to ruin the proverb and he’s going to ruin it by explaining it. Have you ever seen someone do that? If they have a joke and nobody gets it and by the time they’ve explained they’ve just shot the whole thing, it’s no funny any more. It’s the same thing here, here’s the proverb that Solomon gives them, and he says oh yeah, this is a great proverb, let me explain it to you and by the time Solomon gets through his explanation the proverb is completely idiotic, just completely ridiculous.
So now in verses 10-12 Solomon begins his sarcastic explanation. And he says sure, they receive a reward, here’s loner number one and here’s loner number two and they get together and they’re going to go out on a job; they’ll be happy because they’re together and here’s why they’re going to be happy. Verse 10; verse 10 is one reason, verse 11 a second reason, and verse 12 a third reason.
Verse 10, physical safety, you see what I mean, it’s sarcastic, he’s not answering their point. “For if they fall,” or literally “if either of them fall,” that is get into an accident, “the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him that is alone when he falls, for he has not another to help him up.” In other words, you need someone around for first-aid. Now you can obviously see what he’s doing to the proverb, he’s just laughing at it. He’s just completely laughing at the whole thing. He’s saying look, social adjustment isn’t going to work, he says the only adjustment and benefit you have by being together is if one of you happens to drop an axe on your foot or something the other one is there to tie it up with a band-aid.
Now obviously that’s not what the proverb meant but this is what Solomon is doing to refute the thing. He’s saying look you people, if man has no significance it doesn’t make any difference whether you’re alone or in a group. What difference does it make? What difference does it make whether you’re a person or not, it doesn’t make any difference. Do you realize that if the universe is impersonal, if the universe is just a machine like 20th century thinking is, he’s just a gear and if he’s just a gear it’s a funny kind of gear that has feelings, has emotions, has love, etc. and you’re a queer kind of gear; you’re a queer gear. That’s basically what man is left with. And he’s a fun kind of a piece of machinery because he’s the only piece in the machine that isn’t being fulfilled. Animals have perfect fulfillment, they’re doing their job, etc. but man always seeks something else and he never can be fulfilled, never can be fulfilled! And so the Bible says basically if the universe is not truly a creation of God, if Jesus Christ literally did not die then your life is just a waste of time. So that’s what he’s saying here in verse 10, just refuting it by sarcasm.
Verse 11, “Again, if two lie together, then they have heat; but how can one be warm alone?” And here’s physical need, this is sleeping a night in the cold Palestinian [can’t understand word] you had a problem of what we call radiational cooling; here’s the Mediterranean Sea and you have high mountains, and of course the higher you go in the atmosphere the less humidity you have and you have a phenomena known as radiational cooling, and it gets very cold. This is why out in the desert, for example, it gets extremely cold at night because you have no humidity in the air and humidity traps the wavelengths. The wavelengths from the sun are very short and they can come in and penetrate very easily, but since the earth is of lower temperature than the sun, when it radiates out it radiates out on a long wavelength, the long wavelengths are reflected by humidity, cloud layers, etc. But over the desert you don’t have humidity and out over the deserts of Palestine you didn’t have humidity, and so the earth just radiates its heat back out and it gets very cold at night. And these people in the ancient world took their long [not familiar with word, sounds like: shim lahs], what they called them, and they wrapped themselves in them. I don’t know how it smelled because they wore it all day and slept it in it all night, so you can imagine what happened after a while. This was the way the ancient world lived and you have to see and appreciate that they had a need for heavy clothing for nighttime, and also during the daytime to keep the sun off of them.
So verse 11 was a need, a physical need, but trivial because basically the point that these people were trying to do is solve man’s inner spiritual vacuum and Solomon said well, if man doesn’t count then he doesn’t have a spiritual vacuum to fill so the only advantage you have as far as a group is concerned is that you can help one another out if one of you gets a sore toe, verse 10, or if you need some heat at night, verse 11, you just kind of cozy up to one another to sleep and keep each other warm
Then verse 12, “And if one assault,” “prevail against him” is the word for assault, “if one assaults him, two shall withstand him;” so the third need that is satisfied by the group he says is just simply physical defense. He says if some bully comes along and beats you up, you’ve got two you can win, that’s all. In other words, he’s denying that there’s a spiritual vacuum in man, he’s already said look, I can’t fill that thing so let’s just forget it, let’s just eat, drink and be merry. That’s Solomon’s philosophy, which is the only philosophy that can exist apart from Biblical Christianity. Now any other system that gives meaning to life is hypnosis and this generation must understand this. This is why today on the college campus we have the radicals, this is why we have an increase in dope, etc. This is not just immorality, the point is that these kinds have a spiritual vacuum. Their mentality has no divine viewpoint; the objective in the Christian life is to build a divine viewpoint framework in the mentality of the soul which looks like this: in the center you have God, around God you have Bible doctrine, around this you have the three spheres of life, you have culture in general, you have the social life of man and you have the individual life of man. You have science, history, philosophy, art, music, these are things and activities in culture that man must move from God through Bible doctrine out here in various categories and enjoying it and tying it all together. Out here you have man’s social life, you have the individual life, you have his job, sex, his possessions, health, you have these various aspects of an individual life. These can be tied to God through Bible doctrine and give unity to your life. You have man’s social life. You have fellowship with other believers, you have fellowship with loved ones, you have fellowship with friends, and generally with society, community, etc.
But the thing that brings unity out of chaos is Bible doctrine and this is the objective for the mature Christian, to get what is known in the New Testament as the edification of the believer, and this means this divine viewpoint framework I the mentality of the soul but it demands Bible doctrine and if you don’t have Bible doctrine there’s nothing to hang the stuff on and so our generation today sees nothing but chaos and they’re absolutely right. If there is no such thing as God, if there is no way to have fellowship with Him on a personal level day by day and if He really doesn’t tell me things that He wants me to do, then let’s just chuck it. The only hypocrisy we have is not on the part of the youth, it’s on the part of a lot of people that engage in the administration of educational institutions etc. who for the last 20-30 years have done nothing but tear apart the Word of God and expose it to skepticism, etc. and destroy it. How can you have a tree bearing fruit when you chop the roots away? What you see today is just a result of almost 50 years of attacks against the Bible. That’s what it is. If you cut the roots you’re going to destroy the fruit and today we have the young people in a tremendous vacuum and it’s a spiritual vacuum and they’re trying to fill it with sex, and they’re trying to fill it with drugs, and the latest thing is spiritism, messing around with Ouija boards and all the rest of it, and the other fad is Oriental religion.
None of those things, as we’ve seen in the book of Ecclesiastes are going to solve it but they have to got to try each one to see if they fill it. You’ve got to see why they are doing this, it’s not because they just want to raise hell, it’s because they want to fill that vacuum and they’re going to try everything they can because they have been robbed from the answers given to them in the Bible. The churches are mumbling something and the educators are mumbling something else but nobody is giving them a meaning and a purpose to life. The people around the city that are complaining about the young people, in the clergy, are precisely those clergymen who have done nothing to reach the college campus. We have one of the biggest mission fields in west Texas? How many churches do you find, first of all that have something to give the students and secondly are doing it with an active college program? And yet it’s these same ministers that say how can you stop this and that, etc. You may be very concerned, but it’s hypocrisy to say let’s stop it when you have done absolutely nothing. People could care less if the campus goes to hell and then it starts going to hell and they don’t like it.
It’s that simple; I hate to be blunt about it but it’s the only way to communicate what is the issue, and the issue is that these kids have a vacuum and it will be filled with something and if we are discerning Christians we’d better make sure at least they have an opportunity to hear the gospel message. And they should have the opportunity of hearing without pressure, of hearing the message hearing clearly, precisely, presented in their language; just like if you sent missionaries out to a tribe, you wouldn’t expect them to know King James English and send them out to the Alca Indians, there’d be a little difficulty in communication. You have to have your missionaries skilled in the language in which the people speak and that includes the language of the young people, it includes various geographic locations. We have an opportunity as Christians to at least present the gospel. If you are a Christian you have the only solution there is; communism can’t fill the vacuum; communism promises society but the problem with communism is it’s based on a materialism and materialism can’t satisfy a spiritual vacuum and that is why the intellectuals in Russia today are defecting like crazy. They’ve had communism dumped down their mouths since they were knee-high to a grasshopper, until it’s coming out their ears and still it doesn’t satisfy.
So we have the Russian intellectuals revolting against materialism because it doesn’t satisfy. People in the western world are revolting because it doesn’t satisfy; the Orients revolt because they can’t find anything to satisfy. Christians are the only ones that have something and they sit around and do nothing; that’s really brilliant strategy but that is what’s happening. Lubbock has more human good in it; human good is products which are good in themselves but emanate about just a moral base minus all spirituality. Morality without spirituality, in other words it’s trying to lead a good, moral ethical life and you don’t give any reason for doing it. It God really isn’t there and Jesus Christ hasn’t died on the cross and rose from the dead, then there is no reason to be moral and ethical; you have no other reason than to revert back to what Solomon said in 2:24-26, there is no pleasure, “there is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. For who can eat, or who else can abstain,” apart from Him. That is the only other answer apart from Biblical Christianity. Just get what you can now and that’s what’s happening, people are getting what they want as of the moment, the “now generation.” We live in the present, we don’t bother with the past, our mistakes haunt us and we don’t want to look about the future because we’re scared so all we do is live for the present, get what we can while the getting’s good.
Now that is a logical conclusion and you have to see this. This is not just something tacked on, this is not just a group of people that are raising Cain, this grows out of negative Christianity; it grows out of a spiritual vacuum, and it is a logical outworking. You who have gone through Ecclesiastes with me should understand, as very few people do in this community, you should understand because Solomon has taught you that out of nothing comes nothing, and if you start with minus spirituality you never can produce true happiness because Christian is a relationship, it is not something that has to do with rules, although there are rules to it.
Christianity looks at God and says God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is love, God is omniscient, God is omnipresent, omnipresence, and immutability. These are the attributes of God and down here we have man, and man looks up and God looks down and there’s a problem because man has sinned. And when man has sinned he has violated God’s absolute righteousness, when absolute righteousness is violated justice goes down and decrees death. So that’s why the Bible says “the wages of sin is death,” and it’s not just talking about immorality. The word “sin” in the Bible means transgression of God’s will. The first sin that was ever committed was a very simple one; somebody had lunch where they weren’t supposed to. What was immoral about it; what was immoral about Eve walking over and grabbing something to eat; nothing immoral about that but it was an absolute sin because it violated God’s righteousness.
So we have this barrier set up; we have a barrier of sin, we have a barrier of death and man also has another barrier, lack of perfect obedience to God and this barrier is what separates him. It’s this barrier that causes this sin problem, it’s the barrier, the death, both the physical death and the spiritual death, the spiritual death that gives us this vacuum that we feel. That’s the problem man has and you can only solve it by God’s grace. It turns out God is also a God of love, but this is love without sentimentalism; this is not love on the emotional basis this is love with tough standards and therefore that God loves us is true but when He goes to love and express His love toward us He will never violate His character. This is love that grows out of strength, and so when God looks down on man and He says I love you, He’s going to do something but what He does is not going to violate His righteous standards and so when God expresses His love it’s in the form of a cross. Why? Because Jesus Christ died on the cross; God the Son becomes man in order to die, deity can’t die, humanity can, so therefore Jesus Christ dies on the cross; when He dies on the cross God takes the sins of the world and puts them on Jesus Christ.
Here you are, you have a burden of sin. This is something you might not feel; it’s not a question of whether you feel it or not, emotions have nothing to do with it, this is a legal question. And so here you are you have sin, so God moves the sin from your account over to the account of Jesus Christ. And so you have this transfer, when the credit is transferred to Christ, He died on the cross, and this is why in those three hours of darkness on the cross He screamed out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me” as He quoted Psalm 22. And if you want to find out what Jesus Christ did on the cross all you have to read is Psalm 22, because “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me” is verse 1; as you read down through the Psalm you read about the crucifixion, etc.
So Jesus Christ died on the cross quoting Psalm 22 and as He quoted Psalm 22 He bore your sins and mine, He paid for them, so the legal basis is now cleared. Therefore there’s not a question that I can have fellowship, and now the fellowship is available if I personally will receive Jesus Christ. And this doesn’t mean walking down the aisle, signing cards or anything else, it means personally, individually do you trust, completely, in the work of Jesus Christ on your behalf. If you don’t, you’re not a Christian; if you do, you are, it’s as simple as that. “As many as received Him, to them gave He the power.” Now that’s the good news and that is what should be given out and is not being given out. And then we wonder what’s happening, everything is going to pot; it’s very simple what’s happening, it couldn’t be clearer, it works like a rule of science; if you deprive a generation of the gospel that next generation to come along will be a generation of hell-raisers.
We have seen this in history for there was a time in the 17th and 18th century when there were two countries, Britain and France, one country had the gospel and the other didn’t, and which country had the revolution and has never been the same? France, in 1789 when the French Revolution moved in it was the radicals who took over, under the guise of what they’re doing today, liberty, equality and paternity and all the rest of it, the brotherhood crowd, and they’re going to take over and what happened in France. France hasn’t had a stable government since except Napoleon and isn’t that interesting; you started off with a monarchy and you wound up with a dictatorship. That’s where your social revolution went and do you know why it went that way? Because you had no French nucleus of Bible-believing Christians, that’s why. The Catholic Church had never been very strong in France and the Frenchmen by and large rejected it, so they had absolutely nothing of Christianity.
But over in Britain something happened, a man by the name of John Wesley got going. And John Wesley moved around, he began to minister the Word of God and he began to see something. He said listen, I see these people in the coal mines all over England and these coal miners have a right to hear the gospel, and I’m going to see that they do. And so the Anglican clergy said no you’re not and Wesley said oh yes I am, you can excommunicate me, you can do anything you want, but I am going to see that these people have the right to hear the gospel. And Wesley went through the coal mines of England and out of the Wesley revival came stability that many historians credit with saving England from the revolution. That’s what saved England in history, so what I’m telling you is not some little nice sweet principle from Sunday School, this thing has worked in history and you can see it again and again. You can see what happened in Britain, in the 19th century the sun never set on the British Empire. Do you realize that during the 19th century it was the century of missionaries, great missionaries moved out from Britain and they were financed largely by missionary societies in London, and simultaneously with that missionary outthrust you had the rise of the British Empire and when that outthrust became weakened you had the collapse of Britain until today, it’s a second, third, fourth rate nation.
It’s the same way it’s going in America, you can go back to the USA when the first people to the shores were Puritans; the Puritans had quirks, they were oddballs in certain respects, and yet the Puritans were even said by their enemies to be one of the most unique, tough group of people that history has ever seen or ever will see. A unique powerful people; why? Because these people had meditated upon Bible doctrine to the point where it transformed their mentality; they were tough thinkers. When they sat down for a sermon people like Jonathan Edwards could speak to them, and he wasn’t an emotional speaker, some of you are familiar with Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and think he was emotional. He used to read his sermons, very unemotional, very unemotional; in fact, he probably didn’t even raise his voice in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. But the doctrine was so hard-hitting and moved the people. And he would lecture for 2 and 3 hours and these people wouldn’t mind it because they had concentration, they could take it in.
And you had people who couldn’t vote in the commonwealth unless they were members in good standing, which meant they knew Bible doctrine. They didn’t let any ignoramus vote because they weren’t democrats in the sense of a democracy. Democracy was unknown to the Puritans. Do you know why? Because they had a republican form, I’m not talking about the parties, I’m talking about two structures of government, so don’t draw conclusions; the republic has to do with a constitution which controls your people. This is why our church has a constitution and the constitution is the source of authority and the people are limited under it because if you have three sin natures, you can have 33,000 sin natures all going together and have absolute chaos, and the Puritans realized it and they realized the block of society that kept stability were those people who were educated and knew Bible doctrine and they refused to allow the right to vote to go to anybody else. And people say that’s bigotry. No it wasn’t, not from their viewpoint; maybe it is from yours but not from the Puritans; the Puritans realized the principle and today it’s bigotry because people don’t have principles so it doesn’t make any difference how much you know because what you know doesn’t count, so I can take an idiot with an IQ of minus 10 and I can take someone with an IQ of 150 and it doesn’t make any difference because content means nothing any more, what you know means nothing any more. So why not let the idiot vote as well as let the educated person vote, there’s no difference.
I want you to see something, the Puritans were the ones who later on, when it comes down to the 1700s, Burke was able to say isn’t it phenomenal, for over 1700 years of English history they got up to the point where they were exporting six million pounds a year of exports, and today, he said, in America in 70 years this country has gone from zero to six million pounds where we are and he got up in Parliament and he pled with them not to take on the colonies, to let them alone because he said they obviously have a divine blessing on them; their growth, they have done in 70 years what it’s taken us 1700 years to do. Why did America grow that fast? Because you had a Puritan base, you had men who later on maybe weren’t Christians who wrote the Constitution but the affect of the Puritan thinking was so strong that they had inherited categories of thinking, right and wrong, and certain concepts of government and the concept of the sin nature of man; that’s why we have checks and balances in the system of government, because of the doctrine of the sin nature. Had the colonists and the early people who set up the Constitution listened to men like Adam Smith and these other people they’d never have put checks and balances in the government because Adam Smith didn’t believe in the sin nature of man. The reason why we had checks and balances until the Supreme Court started working them over, the checks and balances were there explicitly because the Purities said we know later on there’s going to be power lust and there are going to be people that want to take over, and so we’re going to balance them, there’s going to be no sin free perfect society but well just divide up society into three parts, judicial, executive and legislative. And we’ll let one checkmate the other; it’s a very ingenious system, you had checkmates so if one area got out of fellowship and was really raising Cain you have two against one, knock it off. So this is the way they devised it, it’s a very ingenious system of government, but it was devised by people who knew Bible doctrine.
Now let’s go to the rest of what Solomon says. The third theory that he has. The third theory in verse 13-16 deals with the fame excuse. People say well, [can’t understand word] has no purpose, man has no meaning, nothing counts, but anyway, I’ll tell you what does count; if you can work and make a name for yourself and be famous, that’s worth living for. You’ve heard this probably, expressed differently but the same principle. So in verse 13 he considers this. “Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no longer admonished.” That’s his proverb. And the proverb continues in verse 14 by way of explanation, these people would explain it this way: “For out of prison he comes,” literally it’s a Hebrew perfect which means he has come, the Hebrew perfect denotes finished action in this sense. So this young man, whoever he is, we don’t know historically who he was, or whether this was just kind of a device of proverbial literature or what but Solomon quotes this, “Better is a poor and a wise child,” this is a very young man, the word means a teenager or younger, “than an old and stupid king, who will no more be admonished.”
And this is an explanation of the proverb, [14] “For out of prison he has come,” that’s the young child, “he has come to reign;” and then the next phrase is mistranslated and there’s no excuse for this mistranslation because this has been around Hebrew commentaries for at least 150 years and yet as late a translation as the RSV has not cleaned this thing up. “For out of prison he has come to reign; though he was born poor within his kingdom.” You see “born in his kingdom” it means born poor, it doesn’t mean he became poor, “he was born poor within his kingdom.” It’s speaking of this young man, and you have this repeated in history, you have men like Joseph for example, men like David, Solomon’s father, you have men again and again in history, Abraham Lincoln who were born poor and yet they’ve come all the way up and so what Solomon is doing is picking out the extreme. Here’s society and he’s saying look, let’s go down to the low class and let’s go up to the government; let’s make this the high class, he’s the man on the throne, the king. And let’s take the lowest peon we can think of, a young person who is in jail, and the word “jail” here means a person who has been in prison because of debt or something, it’s not criminal, “out of prison he has come to reign,” he has absolutely no property whatever and he moves all the way up through society to the number one position, certainly that would generate a name. So he says this is fantastic, and better is the poor and wise child because he has this fantastic climactic rise to prominence.
Then in verse 15 Solomon knocks the proverb down and he says, “I considered,” I looked at this thing, I gave it careful examination, “all the living who walk under the sun, with the second child,” that sentence should be continued, no comma after “sun,” “I considered all the living which are walking under the sun with the child, the second one,” this means the generation that’s following this young person, I’m looking at them and they’re fantastic, a tremendous multitude is following this young dynamic leader as he’s ascending up, and this child, the second one, “that shall stand up in his stead,” “his stead” refers to the old man, the king. So this young man has come out of prison, he’s going to reign, he isn’t reigning yet but he’s going to, potential, and on his way, on his rise to power within that society he has gathered together a tremendous group of people in verse 15, “I considered all the living who are walking with him,” a mob walks with this man, he’s tremendous, he’s popular, he has everything you could think of if you want fame.
And then in verse 16 comes the blast, “There is no end of all the people,” but these people in verse 16 aren’t the ones in verse 15; verse 16 moves to a different people and he says, “There is no end of all the people, even of all that have been before them;” “them” referring back to the two kings, and he’s looking at history and he says wait a minute, all this jazz you tell me about fame, wait a minute, when I lay out history like this there you are and you’re a little dot and you may have a large mob that follows you today but I can count back in history to mobs upon mobs upon mobs of people and they didn’t even know you, they were all before them, “they also who come after shall not rejoice in him.” And I look forward in history and I see mobs and mobs and mobs of people who will never know him, they will never “rejoice in him” means they never recognize him, they never respond to him, so he says where is your fame, what difference does it make? That’s his point, what difference does it make, it doesn’t make any difference once you’ve given up a personal vital relationship with God through Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean a thing. [“There is no end of all the people, even of all that have been before them; they also who come after shall not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and vexation of spirit.”]
Now what’s the Christian answer to this whole thing; turn to Ephesians 6. Let’s again briefly review the Christian solution to Solomon’s dilemma. And incidentally, the only solution there basically is. Beginning in 6:1, problems of authority and Paul is going to tell his generation how to lay down authority and have it respected. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. [2] Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, [3] That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.” Verses 1-3 lay down a principle of parental authority, it says something to the young people, it says listen, you respect your parents not because of who and what they are, but because of who and what the Lord is and what He’s told you. You may not catch the difference here but there’s a tremendous difference to see. Here is a young person, here’s another young person. Here’s the parent; now we have this young person, he says I’m going to obey my parents because of who and what they are, they are my ultimate authority. Well, he just has to get to college before he realizes his parents aren’t ultimate authorities. So what’s going to happen if he’s been raised to think that all authority emanates from this unit; after a while he’s going to say wait a minute that unit is pretty insignificant, it doesn’t count and therefore we have rebellion.
But watch how the New Testament links the authority; Paul doesn’t say “children obey your parents” period. He doesn’t end there, he goes on and he says “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right,” and so Paul takes it one step higher to God’s authority, and he says look, you obey your parents, you may not like them personally, but you obey them and respect them out of the institutions of God, divine institution number two which is the institution of family. And you hang your respect for authority because the authority comes from God.
Now watch how he does it again, verse 4, he talks to the parents, “And fathers, stop provoking your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” and “provoking to wrath” means that these parents are irritating the children by imposing their arbitrary on the child and not linking their authority to God. And this is why Paul adds quickly, “but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” In other words, look, you say to your kids, the authority I have didn’t come from me, these rules that we lay down around here are my best approximations as to what I know of the will of God and I have to obey them as well as you do, so the answer is that God is over both parents and child. Now that’s the way the Bible solves the problem of authority. If you have an adequate base for authority that can be respected you have no problem with authority; the only reason you have rebellion against authority is because the people that rebel don’t respect the authority. But if God Himself is the authority, then you can see there’s a person with a character strong enough to have respect.
Verse 5, “Servants be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, and singleness of your heart as unto Christ.” Here is the employee/employer relationship. Here you have the employer, here you have the employee. What does Paul say to the employee? He says listen, you may have the worst clod on earth for your boss, he may be personally obnoxious to you, but if God has led you to the job, and He should have if you’re a Christian, you should have prayed about it in the first place, if you didn’t pray about it you shouldn’t be in there, but if God has led you to this job then He really is your employer. Your employer or Jesus Christ, if you’ve prayed about this thing and God has worked so that you can get the job, then Christ is your employer and you work as unto Him, you don’t work as unto this guy. And it makes a fantastic difference. This is not just some self-hypnosis gimmick of positive thinking; that’s not what it is.
This is only true, of course, if Jesus Christ really at the Father’s right hand this morning. This is only true and hangs together if the whole Bible is true, but if it is true, then this can transform the employer/employee relationship. Look what he says further, verse 6, “Not with eyeservice as men-pleasers, but as servants but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” Do you see why it’s necessary for you as Christians. If you are a Christian and have received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you have an obligation to pray about your job. And to see that God leads you to it because if He doesn’t, then how can you do verses 5-6? How can verses 5-6 be a reality in your life if you haven’t followed the Lord’s guidance into the job. You’re going to feel frustrated the rest of the time. Don’t go out and quit just because you haven’t prayed about it, pick up the pieces where you are. You’ve got to follow the Lord’s will, if you haven’t up to now, start. But verses 5-6 isn’t going to solve anybody’s problem unless it’s true.
Verse 7, “with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men.” So Christ is your employer and the chain of authority and the reason for working isn’t for workmanship; that was Solomon’s first theory. Remember the theory of workmanship, do a good job, it doesn’t matter why but just do a good job for the sake of doing a good job. Nonsense! Christians do a good job because Jesus Christ is their employer and they would be ashamed to do anything less. If you are a Christian employee you should be the best employee there, to the best of your ability. If you are a Christian soldier, I’ve heard Christian soldiers say well I have trouble about killing; well you ought to get straightened out about killing. If you’re in the military service and God has called you to the military service, one of your job at times is going to be to kill and you might as well learn how to use your weapon effectively and be an effective killer. It sounds gruesome but that’s the role of the military and it’s authorized in Genesis 9. So if that’s your job you be a good killer. Whatever your job is, wherever Christ as led you, you do a good job. That’s the point.
The second theory Solomon is this problem of companionship. Do you see now it doesn’t make any difference, your companionship on the job is your fellowship with Jesus Christ, not with other people. And then finally the third thing is fame; you’ll get fame and recognition from God and that’s what Paul’s talking about in verse 7, you just do it as unto the Lord and the Lord will give you the reward. You don’t have to worry about who’s going to see you, who’s not going to see you, how many brownie points you’re going to get for doing this or that; just relax, you work as in the presence of God. With our heads bowed.