Ecclesiastes Lesson 16

Watch Your Business – 5:10-20

This book of Ecclesiastes is one of the most unusual books in the Word of God because it provides a complete and opposite answer to life than the rest of the Scriptures. The reason for this is that God the Holy Spirit has preserved the agony of a man in trouble and the results of his thinking and his meditation is preserved for us in this book. Solomon was a man who was out of fellowship most of his life; Solomon became a believer sometime during childhood with his father, David. We don’t know exactly when it was but he got out of fellowship. He was not a New Testament believer but the New Testament believer, the moment we receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and trust in Him we become a Christian. We are put “in Christ” as the Bible says, technically, en Christo, and en Christo is a technical term in the New Testament which means you are joined spiritually to the body of Christ. This is not because you are a member of some church. It is because you have personally received Jesus Christ as your Savior and that is the only reason. God put you there and God is going to keep you there and no man can change your status. It is spiritually secure forever. However, there is a bottom circle to our experience and it’s this circle that Solomon that had trouble with, as we all do. This circle delineates the will of God for your life; at any given moment you are either in this circle or out of the circle. You get out of the bottom circle through personal sin, you get back in by 1 John 1:9.

Solomon, however, got out of the bottom circle and stayed out; he refused to use the assets that God had provided to restore him to this bottom circle and the will of God for his life. Therefore the longer that Solomon stayed out the more intense became his agony, because when you stay out of fellowship God, as your heavenly Father, will discipline you. And the longer you disobey the harder the spanking becomes. And it gets pretty sore after a while and by the time that Solomon wrote this he was sore. So in chapter 5 we have begun to read his philosophy of life that he worked out. In other words, Solomon had a problem, he deteriorated, as far as the mentality of his soul was concerned, from the great man that had studied and had taught proverbial literature throughout Israel, he was the man who composed most of the proverbs we have in the book of Proverbs, he had excellent insight into the justice of God and the principles thereof. He had two occasions when God verbally spoke to him.

And yet having got out of fellowship he began to deteriorate. He began to slide and he began to weaken spiritually. The result is this book, and in this book we have what we call human viewpoint. In the mentality of your soul there are only two ways you can think, human viewpoint or divine viewpoint. Divine viewpoint means that God is the center and it means that you have an organization; it means that mentally God is at the center of your philosophy of life and your behavior pattern. Around Him we draw a second circle called Bible doctrine which means that you know about God through God’s revelation in His Bible, not because you attach yourself to some convenient slogan, like “God helps those who help themselves,” etc. God does not help those who helps themselves, God helps those who can’t help themselves. That slogan is anti-Biblical.

Bible doctrine is the revelation of the character of God and you only get to know God as you know Bible doctrine. You do not get to know God by your own opinions, by your own speculations. Then around this circle we have all the activities of life; you can have cultural activities, science, history, philosophy, art, music, the personal activities such as your fellowship with other believers, with loved ones, friends, society, and social relationship. And then we have sex, your job, possessions and health, we have many of these things in this outer circle. Now the Word of God tells us about God’s character and provides a framework for every area of life. Not only does it provide a framework, like spokes of a wheel, so that the Word of God flows out into every area, not only does it do that, but it sets up such a fantastic framework that it connects all of these into one great area of truth. And so using the divine viewpoint framework which the Holy Spirit is building in the mentality of your soul from the moment you accept Christ, you begin to collate and develop all of these areas.

This is why, for example, students who grasp the Word of God have the amazing change of mental attitude as far as their studies are concerned. Christians who have trouble with their studies have trouble either, #1 because they are spiritually out of it, or #2 is they do not grasp this divine viewpoint framework concept. If you grasp the divine viewpoint concept you will understand that no matter what it is you study it is an area of truth. If it’s an area of history, it’s about events that happened; if it’s about events that happened, then you can take the principles of the Word of God and analyze it. So every area of study basically involves truth and the divine viewpoint framework gives you this.

In fact, we discover in the pages of God’s Word that only from the Word of God do you have a framework to analyze all the things of life, for if you do not and you operate on human viewpoint, like Solomon did, here’s what it looks like. You have what I could call a divine viewpoint disorganization. There’s no organization, you have all of these things scattered around, science over here, history over here, philosophy, art, music, maybe you have fellowship with believers in one little pocket that you call spirituality and over here you have fellowship with loved ones, friends, society, etc. All of it’s just chaos because you don’t have any framework in which to order your life. And on top of that you lack significance; you have no assurance that you are personally significant, you could be a lone ranger in the universe for all you are concerned. You have no consistency to life because you have no basic principle for it and you have no purpose to life. That’s human viewpoint framework and that was Solomon’s problem.

However, Solomon was a clever man and he realized he couldn’t accept this; he couldn’t accept the logical result of unbelief. Very, very, very few men can and so 95% of the people that you meet today who are operating on a non-Christian base have stolen from Christianity and there’s various things. You see, no man can stand this, you can’t stand this; if you really believer these last three things, no significance, no consistency and no purpose to your life you probably wouldn’t live more than 24 hours before committing suicide. So therefore you have to get these thigns and so you steal them, and Solomon has done this. He’s said look, I am going to go over here and I’m going to borrow the word “God” and he invests the word “God” with a different meaning than the Bible does and the rest of the Scripture. For Solomon God is somebody out there that he can’t know, somebody out there that created the universe, somebody out there that ordered everything but doesn’t really show himself. And of course this is opposite to the Word of God, God continually shows Himself.

And so Solomon has done this thing, he’s borrowed a purpose for life, he doesn’t really understand the big deep purposes of life; he says at least there’s one purpose of life and we’re going to get to that today, and he’s been doing this again and again in this book of Ecclesiastes, and that is this: the purpose for living according to Solomon is to enjoy things now. In other words, this is not necessarily a “live it up” philosophy but, for example if you’re ascetically inclined then just lie down in your living room and listen to stereo all day because if that’s what’s going to give you joy in life, fine, do it. And if you’re the kind of person that can’t get away from the table and have to eat 15 times a day then go ahead and eat 15 times a day. If you have to have a nip about every hour on the hour, then you go ahead and do that. But whatever it takes to keep you going in life, and give you some pleasure in life, go ahead and do it. That’s Solomon’s philosophy. You laugh at that but yet that basically is the only sane philosophy of life left for the non-Christian. It’s tragic but true… tragic but true.

People come to me and say I can’t believe there are people that don’t have purpose for life. Evidently I’ve just wasted my time beating my gums up here for the last four months because this is the whole point of the book of Ecclesiastes, that the non-Christian has no purpose for life. Then you meet one that has no purpose and you say I can’t believe it. You have to apply the Word of God to the situation and Ecclesiastes tells you that they don’t so why be surprised when they don’t, it’s just verification of Scripture. Just like in the book of Acts they prayed that Peter would be released, he gets released and knocks on the door and they won’t let him in. A girl comes to the door, “it’s Peter,” and runs back and tells everybody, and he’s out there getting sore knuckles trying to open up the door. The Word of God comes true and then Christians don’t believe it. This is why it’s ludicrous when you have some professor on the college campus some place tell you that the Christians made up all these stories. If anything they wouldn’t have thought of them, they’re too dumb. The generation of the believers in the gospel narratives was probably one of the slowest generations to catch on in the entire age of the church. You have the same thing in the nation Israel; the generation that went out of Egypt with Moses, only two of them passed the test out of three or four million, Caleb and Joshua; that’s how sad the generation was.

God always picks an idiot generation when He does a new thing. Do you know why? Because in the Old Testament He started with Moses and He said let me see, I want to pick the generation that has the greatest number of idiots and so I’ll pick this generation, and if I can show Myself in a complete and total way in a generation of idiots then the manifestation of Myself to that generation will be lasting evidence for history. That’s what He did in the Old Testament; this is why you have the eleven disciples, and not one of them caught on to the resurrection until after it happened. Jesus said over and over again I’m going to die and I’m going to be raised from the dead, and oh no Lord, you’re not going to die. And two women grasped the point; two women, and they understood the doctrine clearly, this is why one of them took alabaster ointment and smashed over His head, because it was a form of burial, that’s what it was. It was just a form of burial and showed that she understood the issue. And the eleven disciples were clucks and did not shape up until after the resurrection; so they didn’t make up anything about what Schoenfield and the rest of the people say, no Passover plot, they were too dumb to make up a Passover plot. So all of that can be discarded.

Beginning in 5:10 we have a series of proverbs that extends down to the end of verse 20. This section can be broken up into three parts; from 5:10-12 we have short proverbs on the reality of wealth and its problems. 5:13-17 we have Solomon add an example of the heartache of wealth; then in 5:18-20 we have his conclusion and a restatement of his philosophy of life. The point is in integrating it with the total context here, is that Solomon is on this business, if you turn to 6:12 you see what he’s saying, he’s in a whole section in which to him life is uncertain. You can’t tell what’s going to happen, you can’t tell if you walk out here and stand on the curb and some guy will run you over, you can’t tell. Life is uncertain, and so in verse 12, ”For who knows what is good for a man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spends as a shadow.” Now this is sour grapes on Solomon’s part because Solomon is a man who is out of fellowship at this point and the reason he has sour grapes is because every Christian has sour grapes when they’re out of fellowship. They’re nasty, some of the most obnoxious people to be around are Christians out of fellowship. It’s far more relaxing to be around a good, honest unbeliever than to be around a Christian out of fellowship. They are horrible people out of fellowship, and Solomon expresses this vindictiveness, etc. in verse 12.

So in verse 12 we find his overall point; if life is uncertain, since he can’t be sure apart from the Word of God, if life is uncertain then he draws three conclusions. The first conclusion he drew in the first part of the chapter was don’t get involved in religious activity, just “worship God,” (quote end quote) made after your own imagination and stay clear of getting involved. Now sometimes that’s excellent advice because Christianity is not a religion but his point was just don’t get involved. That was religion; then we had don’t get involved in social things and that was the point he’s making, is that if you see injustice in society, you can’t fight the machine, you can’t fight city hall, so forget about it. And that’s verses 8-9.

Now in verses 10 through the end of this chapter his theme is don’t get involved in business, in other words, economics. And this is going to actually run through chapter 6 but today we’ll just finish chapter 5. This is stay out of getting involved in business entanglement; you can’t be sure of your life, you can’t be sure what’s going on so why get involved and waste your time fiddling around with something that the dividends of which are always in the future, always in the future and you run your life on the future, what profit you’re going to make in the future, the investments in the stock market, etc. and all the rest of it, everything in the future, living in the future. And he says don’t do that, if you operate on a non-Christian basis the logical thing for you to do is just to stay clear of this and make as much money as you can to eat and get by but don’t get too involved. And that’s his theme.

So in verses 10-12 he gives you some short proverbs on the problem of wealth. Verse 10, “He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver,” and this is a proverb either he made up or he borrowed from his day, “silver” being money in his currency, “and he that loves abundance, with increase,” that’s wrongly translated. In the Hebrew it says “and who is he that loves abundance, there is no increase for him.” In other words, it’s a rhetorical question and if you put it in a question you get the frustration of this man; “who is he,” who’s the one that comes around here and who loves abundance, the word “abundance” means business, it means getting involved in all sorts of business activities, who loves this; look at it carefully because you don’t get anything back out of it. [10c, “this also is vanity.”]

Verse 11, “When goods increase, they are increased who eat them; and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes.” We have to make some corrections here; unfortunately the King James is a poor translation of the proverbial literature. I’ve also been shocked to notice that the RSV is about equally as bad. So we have a very unfortunate situation today where the translations available are not too good at communicating the wisdom literature. There’s no excuse for it because you can pick up any Hebrew commentary and it will give you the correct translation. Verse 11, “When goods increase, those that eat them” is a Hebrew idiom for consumers, “the consumers are increased,” you have inflation; as the goods increase the consumers are increased. “…and what good,” and the word here is the craftsmanship, “to the owners thereof.” “…what good is the craftsmanship,” the word “craftsmanship” was used in 4:4. Back there he said, “I considered all travail, and all craftsmanship, that for this a man is envied of his neighbor.” He was saying look, when I look out on society and I see this business of business competition and here’s man A and here’s business man B and businessman A is always trying to outdo businessman B. And he says I’m just showing my craftsmanship, I’m showing my business skill. Solomon says that’s a bunch of bologna, all you’re showing is your envy of B, that’s all, you just want to show you’re greater than B so therefore you try to outstrip him in business and other things. But it results, he says, from a personal mental attitude of envy.

So in 5:11 he brings up this topic of craftsmanship again, he says, “what good is it after all to the owners thereof,” what good does it do to excel in business, the only thing that results, exception clause, “saving the beholding of them with their eyes?” “Saving the beholding of them” refers to the results of their business, the profits, etc. the products that they produce. He says all you can do, you can’t even enjoy the products you produce, all you can say is look at them. Now he’s going to develop the reason why they don’t enjoy them in a little bit, but his point here is that you look at this, you produce all this thing, you give your life into this thing and all you’ve got is something to stare at and that’s all. But you can’t really get enjoyment out of those things.

Verse 12 is a third proverb, “The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat littler or much; but the abundance of the rich will not allow him to sleep,” and the point here, the word “abundance” means a full stomach, and it’s an idiom, what he’s saying is look, you can take a person who’s a simple laborer and he doesn’t have much responsibility, he is just making enough to get by and therefore life is simple for him. So he goes out and he makes his money, he relaxes, he enjoys himself and maybe today he eats and maybe tomorrow he doesn’t but at least he has calmness, he’s not upset, constantly worried, constantly making plans for his business, constantly worrying about competition, constantly worrying about government interference, constantly doing this, constantly doing that, all of this is out of the jurisdiction of the laborer, all he has to do is just simply work and he has a nice, simply quiet life.

Now given the non-Christian base this is reasonable. If God has led you to be a laborer, fine; if he has not led you to be a laborer, or has not led you into business, that’s probably the best advice possible. If God hasn’t led you into the job that you are in and you are frustrated, and you are antagonized by people on the job, your boss is an old grouch and every time you look at him you have to kind of look at the floor to control yourself, and every time he has to look at the ceiling to control himself, and you have all these personal antagonisms, the best thing for you, Solomon says, is just pick some little simple job, maybe sharpening pencils, you can go out and sharpen pencils all day and come back and relax in the evening because you don’t have business problems.

Now that’s the most logical thing for you to do unless God has guided you into the situation, in which case, then your employer is no longer your human employer but it is the Lord Jesus Christ and if He has led you into this area He is your employer and you follow Him. This is the doctrine of employer/employee that we derived from Colossians and Ephesians. So you see, Jesus Christ, if He is your employer, He gives you the assignment, it makes the job worthwhile. And you can turn your problems over to Him, and it may be that you have great problems on the job, but you know one thing, that God led you there, and you know another thing, that God always supplies all of your need, “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose.” “Casting all your care upon Him for He cares for you.” So you take those business problems and you set them on the Lord and you don’t worry about them, and you can relax at night because you have relaxed using the promises of the Word of God. So there’s a way, it doesn’t have to be the way Solomon says.

It has to be this way, however, if (1) you are not a Christian, or (2) you are a Christian and you are out of fellowship. This is the only thing left; obviously such a person like this can worry. So verse 10 gives us the idea that money and the drive for wealth and economic involvement never satisfies. In verse 11 he says you can’t even enjoy it because all you can do is look at it, there’s no real deeper joy. And verse 12 says you can’t even relax with it. So obviously he’s coming to a conclusion it’s not too worthwhile.

In verses 13-17 he adds an example of his own that he’s worked up, that he tacks on to these proverbs. In verses 13-17 he is now going to bring the case of a man who’s put all his eggs in one basket and someone comes along and drops the basket. Here is a man who has planned for his family, he has planned to provide everything for his family, and bang, through a bad investment he loses all of his money. So he says, verse 13, “There is a sore [great] evil,” and the word “sore evil” here means a thickening, the word “sore” means decaying, diseased, he says this thing is a rotten evil “which I have seen under the sun,” please notice the phrase “under the sun.” “Under the sun” in this book always refers you to the fact that Solomon is thinking within a human viewpoint framework, that’s a tip off phrase of this book, “under the sun.” Given the fact that we operate in a naturalistic environment in which we do not have revelation from outside, that this is just a natural situation, we’re living under the sun with no help from above the sun, then these things follow; that’s the point of the book.

“There is a thickening evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.” The word “kept” here is a Hebrew participle, passive, which means they are constantly kept, emphasis they never get away from them. These riches are constantly “kept for the owners thereof only to their hurt.” He says isn’t this ironic, we have a man and he’s struggling to keep all these riches together, he stays up nights worrying about how to hold it together, and in the end, after not being satisfied, that was verse 10, after not being able to enjoy it, that’s verse 11, and after not even being able to sleep at night, verse 12, now he has the problem that he’s packed that thing up all around himself and his possessions, and he’s got his little cocoon of materialism and now he thinks he’s going to enjoy himself and now comes disaster, verse 14.

“But those riches perish by evil travail,” now “evil travail” we would translate contemporarily as a bad deal; “evil travail” means it was a wrong investment that he made somewhere along the line, this was a bad move; he invested in the stock market and now he’s lost quite a bit, prices have gone down. So the riches perish by a bad business, except this is worse than a recession, in verse 14 this is talking about an outright business disaster; he has lost everything. And so this bad deal, these riches are completely perished, “and he begets a son, and there’s nothing in his hand.” The poignancy of verse 14, you have to understand that in the Old Testament the father didn’t provide everything for his son but he always gave his son something to start with. This is what the Jewish father would do for his son in the Old Testament. He would always provide his son at least with enough assets so that he could go into business. It didn’t mean that he cushioned him but it meant that he gave him a start and the horrifying thing to the Jewish father is to come here in verse 14, after scrubbing his fingers to the bone, after going through all of these things and then he gets down to the situation where he has a son, he’s about to start his son in business and he hasn’t got anything. And he says not only now is he experiencing horror in himself but now the suffering is transferred over to his son.

Verse 15, “As he came forth out of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labor, which he may carry away in his hand.” Solomon is obviously saying here, it’s restricting man to this material naturalistic framework in which there’s nothing above the material, he says there’s no benefit, what riches are you going to take to the grave? He says this man has lost everything now, his life is a disaster and he goes to the grave and he has absolutely nothing. When he goes to the grave he doesn’t even have enough to give his son that will live after him; absolutely nothing, there’s nothing material that he can carry away with him.

Verse 16 he concludes, “This is also a thickening evil, in all points as he came, so shall he go. And what profit has he that labors for the wind?” This is an illustration of something you find in this book of Ecclesiastes again and again; this is an indication of how deep Solomon had gone in his despair. Solomon, in verse 16, indicates that the man’s state at birth is equal to his state at death, and he does so on a materialistic basis. In other words, what counts for Solomon is the material things, right here and right now.

Now Christianity is not anti-material, it’s just anti-material emphasis. But a lot of religions like to say Christianity is material or anti-material or something. It’s not that, it’s how you use them that counts. But what Solomon has gone to at this point, he’s saying the only thing that counts in life is the material wealth, the empirical things that I can experience here and now in a material way. These things are what counts. And he says I go to my grave and when they put me in the grave my state there is exactly as it was when I came into the world, materially. And of course this is a wrong statement if you consider spiritually, as we’re going to, from the standpoint of Jesus Christ in a moment, but verse 16 shows you that Solomon has descended down to the point where in practice he does exactly what the philosophical materialist does in theory. This is why it’s ironic for many people in the capitalist west to knock the communist materialism. Communism is anti-Scriptural but a lot of the people that criticize communism are materialists themselves. So the objective observe would say well how does your materialism differ from the communist materialism; both of you consider material values so therefore what’s the difference, what’s the big fight about. And if you wage the fight against communism on a material basis you always come out the loser because someone can come right back to you and say what’s your base. So practically Solomon has descended to the point of materialism at this point.

Verse 17, a description of a man’s sorrow, “All his days also he eats in darkness, and he has much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.” This means he keeps on eating, day after day after day after day, eating in a dark house is another idiom that you get in the Old Testament. When you eat in a house of light it means there’s prosperity there, there’s happiness there, there’s joy there, a house that is dark means a house without joy, a house without purpose, a house that’s just bleak. Probably a better word to translate it would be bleak, “in bleakness he eats day after day, and he has much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.” Literally it reads “he is vexed with wrath and sickness,” “wrath” indicates mental suffering and “sickness” indicates physical suffering and so this man not only doesn’t have the wealth to transfer to his son because he has lost it in a bad deal, now only can he not enjoy it, not only can he not be satisfied, and not only can he not go to sleep, but now in verse 17 he is afflicted with this, the mental and physical injuries that come from worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, what am I going to do if this happens, what am I going to do if that happens, etc. This is why so many young people are fed up with the establishment because that’s what they’ve seen in their parents, worry, worry, worry, worry about this, that and the other thing. And you can sympathize with them. If that’s all there is and if God really isn’t real, and He can’t work in the middle of those situations to guide and to give peace and direction, then they’re right, let’s just junk the system because who wants to live this kind of a life.

As we’ve said, there are two kinds of young people today; there’s the kind that you would find in the ghetto where they are poor materially and they think the answer is to be rich materially and there’s a cry for wealth and materialism. On the other hand, you have the people in the middle class to the rich and they’re going back to the ghetto in the sense of the hippie. Why are they doing it? Because they’ve found out something, materialism doesn’t satisfy, they’ve tried that and the poor people in the ghetto haven’t tried it yet and they still think there’s something out there in the material real, if I could just get wealthy, if I could just do this something’s going to happen. They have legitimate problems, but this is the thrust of much of it. So you see there’s a vicious circle operating here.

Now he comes in verses 18-20 and he summarizes this again as he has done so often in this book. Turn back to 2:24-26, this is the first time he summarized this philosophy. “There is no pleasure 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.” Now he’s going to do something in verses 24-26 that he does here so I wanted to review this so it’d be more familiar. In verse 24 he split the verse, the first part, “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.” (period). All right, that’s 24a; that thought is continued down in verse 25, “For who can eat, or who else can abstain apart from him?” That continues the point, in other words, he’s saying that there’s nothing better but to eat and drink; if I look upon my life and I sense these things, where does my pleasure comes from? It only comes in a small way through doing these things, eating and drinking and doing these things, apart from the Scripture that’s the only area I’ll get pleasure. So he says God has set it up that way. Do you see how he’s using the word “God,” God is the God of the machine and God has set up your life, He’s a programmer, He’s designed it this way so you’d better get with it.

And then 24b and 26 gives you the other half of it. [24b] “This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.” Verse 26, “For God gives to a man that is good in His sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy; but to the sinner He gives travail,” and we explained this and went through it, Solomon’s particular way of looking at things that God has designed this, you can’t fight it so just get with it, that’s his philosophy. Relative good. He says look, I can’t get perfect happiness, so obvious thing, settle for relative happiness, settle for something right now and the emphasis is right now. Let me enjoy my life now, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, let’s just enjoy now! He rehearses this doctrine several other times.

Now come over to 5:18-20. Here we see the structure again; we have verse 18, then we have 5:20a, both explain the same thought. Verse 18, “Behold that which I have seen; it is good and comely [fitting] for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he has taken under the sun all the days of his life; which God has given him; for this is his portion.” Then skipping down to the first part of verse 20, “For he shall not much remember the days of his life,” end of thought. This is a particular way, why they do this in this book, but this is the way it’s done. You take two thoughts and then you repeat them afterwards. This is the system that was used oftentimes in proverbial literature.

In verse 18, this is his point, “Behold that which I have seen,” the word “seen” here is the word which is often used in this book to mean I have come to this conclusion. Looking at life from the human viewpoint, using my own sheer reasoning power divorced from the help that the Word of God gives it, this is the conclusion I’ve come to. And you have to remember this, this is a conclusion that has been come to on a naturalistic base and he says looking at life from my viewpoint this is what I’ve seen. “It is good and comely,” and the word “comely” is the Hebrew word “beautiful,” and the Hebrew’s sense of beauty was something that fits together, something that was not chaotic, something that was orderly, something that fit. It’s an unusual point but in the whole entire Old Testament and New Testament you never have a description of what a person physically looked like because in the Bible they were not interested in how you physically appeared, what they were interested in was the inner character, and this was why the emphasis in Scripture again and again is on inner beauty, not outside beauty. It’s not that they declined this, many of the people in the Old Testament were fantastic people, that if they walked in here you’d do a double take. David probably was one of the most handsome men who ever lived; you take a woman like Sarah, Abraham’s wife, and she was probably one of the most beautiful women that eve lived apart from Eve because in her case she was able to snow Pharaoh at 90. So you can figure, either she had a wild set of cosmetics or she had something there.

Now in this case we can infer from the text that these people were fantastically attractive but isn’t it ironic that the Scriptures never mention, they just completely gloss over this thing because that isn’t what counts. What counts, the concept of beauty that you get in Scripture is the inner character. This is why, for example, we don’t know anything about Paul and yet we know from extra-Biblical tradition he was short, the tradition goes, he was hunchback, he was bearded, he was bald, and he was lame. Now that’s the picture of Paul and you can see why he just didn’t make it when he went through Athens and you have these great Greek orators and they are the picture of a man, you know the atlas type, a man here, and the Greeks saw this little scroungy guy come along and what is he talking about? And Paul had a problem communicating to the Greeks because of his evident poor physique. And yet look at what a giant he was in God’s sight because outer physical appearance is not the issue in the Word of God and you will soon find, if you have some friends, real friends, people that don’t smile at you and when you turn your back knife you in the back, if you have some real friends you will suddenly discover some day that the real friend is the person who has character, something that you can trust and it’s not just how he looks but he is a trustworthy character. Young people who date ought to see this in the opposite sex; it’s not the outer appearance of the person, it’s their inner character that counts. The outer appearance comes and goes but it’s the inner character that stays. And it’s the inner character that’s the object of trust. So the Hebrew concept of beauty and the New Testament concept of beauty is something fantastic and utterly different from our day.

So when Solomon says it is “good and beautiful” here, what he is talking about is that this fits together; this seems to have some substance to him at this point. “Behold, that which I have seen; it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he has taken under the sun all the days of his life.” In other words he says forget trying to satisfy yourself ultimately; forget and give up all hope of ever reaching a total solution to your life. Forget and give up the hope of ever finding a true overall purpose of life and getting with it. Forget that, just settle for something less and the something less you settle for is just the effect that you get right now of your comfortable position. Get as comfortable as possible right now, that’s his point, and don’t be too rich, he’s saying, don’t be rich because a rich person can’t be comfortable. Don’t be poor either, that’s going to be the theme later on in this book, don’t be rich and don’t be poor, just have a middle of the road because in the middle of the road it’s comfortable. Get comfortable is his motto.

Then the last part, verse 20, “For he shall not much remember the days of his life,” he “shall not much remember” these things. In other words, this doesn’t last, enjoy it now because you won’t enjoy remembering about it. That’s his point. Just enjoy it now, you’re not going to remember it that long, just enjoy it now. And then the next moment go on and live in that moment, etc. Just live your life like this, getting as much as you an and forgetting trying to totally satisfy yourself.

Then the other set of proverbs is given in verse 19 and in verse 20b. Verse 19, “Every man also to whom God has given riches and wealth, and has given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God.” What’s Solomon’s point here. He’s saying this, if you have riches and you see the point that I’m trying to make, Solomon is saying, and you get with it and you forget trying to be rich, trying to satisfy this inner spiritual vacuum by filling it with material things, if you can relax and maybe you’re one of those rare people, he says, who can have riches and relaxation; maybe you’ve got it so that you can work it out so that you don’t feel constantly threatened, your business doesn’t bother you, you’ve made your pile and now you’re retired or something, you’re relaxed. He says if this is so then you have been much favored of God. So you see how he’s using this favor of God. If this is so, then you’ve been much favored of God. And he says this is truly a “gift of God.”

And then the last part of verse 20 picks the rest of the theme up, “because God answers him in the joy of his heart.” Now this is a strange sentence but you have understand the word “answer” here means he is providing for, and it’s a participle which means in this process, the Hebrew participle is the motion picture tense, he is providing for you, constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly. How is God providing for you? It says, it should be “in” it should be “with the joy of your heart.” God is covering up that vacuum in there that hurts you and pains you, He’s covering that up and He’s covering it up with the joy of the moment, and so you can mask it over now, and tomorrow you’ll be able to mask it over with something else and you should feel happy, because this at least gives you some happiness in life.

Now I said again and again that this is Solomon’s philosophy. This proceeds logically starting where he started, “under the sun.” But it’s not true… it’s NOT true. It is the most logical thing a person who does not know Bible doctrine; it is the most logical thing for him to do. It’s stupid, really, if you look at it it’s stupid for a person who does not care about God’s plan for his life or is ignorant of it, it’s stupid for such a person to go out and grasp the things, trying to say well, there’s a purpose in it somewhere, and he doesn’t know what the purpose is. It’s stupid for him to get involved in social causes and say we’re going to do this and we’re going to bring in the millennium and if he doesn’t have any base for doing it I could come along and say why are you bothering, why not let the human race destroy itself, who cares? Do you see that, a person who gets involved has no answer to that question, he has no reason, he’s just thinking he has a purpose and he goes 90 mph because I think I have a purpose here but he has no base for his purpose.

So whether it’s in religion, verses 1-7 of this chapter, whether it’s in society, verses 8-9, or whether it’s in business, the point still is if you don’t have any real purpose out there then why are you driving at 90 mph in that direction? Just forget it, relax, turn it off, don’t get involved and enjoy yourself. That’s Solomon’s position. But is this true? It would be if the world was just a machine; it would be if we were just pieces of a machine but it turns out that we are in the creation of God, and in Luke 12 Jesus Christ is going to quote from this passage of Scripture in Ecclesiastes. And Jesus Christ goes on record as thoroughly repudiating this viewpoint of life.

Luke 12:16-21, “And He,” Jesus “spoke a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. [17] And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my crops? [18] And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and I will build greater; and there will I bestow all my crops and my goods. [19] And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou has much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease. Eat, drink, and enjoy good [be merry]” this is a quotation from the book of Ecclesiastes. The Lord Jesus Christ picked this up and puts it into a parable and He shows you what’s wrong with the whole thing. He says look, here’s a man who’s involved in a business arrangement, who’s poured his life into it and he’s got down to the point of retirement and he’s going to apply Solomon’s principle; he’s got enough here that he doesn’t to worry and so he can relax, and he’s going to pull out of his business because he doesn’t want involvement, now he wants time to enjoy it, so he’s going to pull out and relax. He’s going to go along with Solomon’s philosophy, he’s going to “eat, drink and be merry.” Now this is not necessarily going out and raising hell. That’s not the point here. That’s not what Solomon is saying. It could be that and in some cases would be that, but not all people enjoy themselves this way. Some people enjoy themselves drinking water I guess, but the point is that people have different ways of enjoying themselves and this is not saying necessarily that you go out and raise hell.

“Eat, drink and be merry. [20] But God said unto him, Thou fool,” and the word is “idiot,” “you idiot, this night your soul shall be required of you: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? [21] So is he that lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” And isn’t it ironic that Jesus Christ seizes on the very thing that Solomon saw, the uncertainty of life. Solomon built his whole point on the fact that life is uncertain and if life is uncertain the only thing you can do is get it not. But the Lord Jesus Christ says yes, life is uncertain, plus sovereignty. He says life is uncertain, uncertain to you as a creature but it’s not uncertain to God and there’s a plan behind it all and that plan might come to a screeching halt tomorrow. And so although life is uncertain to you it’s not uncertain to God.

And I would say Jesus makes two points against Solomon in this passage. The first one is that man is not made to live a better life “under the sun” without some idea of after life. Man is not made to live just “under the sun,” you’re not made just to get involved I business, you’re not made just to do this, that is not the way God has made you, Jesus Christ said. You’re made for better things than that. And he says you’re foolish, absolutely foolish to reduce yourself to this kind of a situation, to reduce yourself to this low-level of living; you’re living less that what you should be.

And the second point that Jesus is making, verse 19, “Eat, drink and be merry,” and then “But God said undo him, this night thy soul shall be required,” “shall be required” is a reference to judgment. And the second point that Jesus makes is that you are responsible creatures, and your judgment… now often times people don’t like to hear of judgment in Scripture, oftentimes because evangelists have overworked this theme and evangelists have worked it into a situation where they emotionally work on an audience to produce what they call decisions. You can’t produce decisions by emotional reaction, you get people to react but you cannot produce a decision on the basis of emotion that is Scriptural. God’s Word demands that if it takes you 15 hours or 15 years to decide you do it then, you take 15 years to decide, but you should think it through and then believe it. Emotional decisions have no place in God’s Word, even though I know that people that have been identified with the fundamentalist movement have made emotion the hallmark of fundamentalism. Don’t mistake it, fundamentalism has nothing to do in its theology with emotion.

The point that Jesus is making is that “tonight your soul may be required” means that you may face judgment, and the judgment means something good. It’s true that judgment is threatening but have you ever thought of something, that the judgment that is so horrible in Scripture, hell that is so horrible in Scripture also says something good to you, and it has something fantastic to say to the 20^th century person and that is that you are significant. You are so significant that the decision you make in your life, the little things, the little decisions you make are fantastic, they have fantastic repercussions. And so they have such great repercussions that they result in judgment. That’s the point. God would never judge a person who did not have the right of choice. We say that man has volition, that’s something tremendous. It means that you are free to choose and nobody is going to twist your arm. God isn’t going to twist your arm, no person can twist your arm, God has given you the right of choice and you can freely use it however you desire; that’s the message of judgment, and judgment means there’s a recognition of that. Creatures without volition would never face judgment. Judgment is bad, yes, because it means that you have two ways to go.

There are two kinds of judgment in Scripture, there’s the kind for the believer, you find this in 2 Cor. 5 in which the believer upon death goes before the bema seat, the bema seat of Christ and there is evaluated according to 2 Cor. 5 on the basis of his works. This is not an evaluation for his salvation; this is an evaluation for his human production, his production quotient which equals the opportunities that he had over the ones that he used in the Christian life and God is going to rate your production. This has nothing to do with salvation. It’s very clear from the context.

The other kind is the judgment of the unbeliever, and this again is according to works; I wish some evangelists would get this straightened out; people do not go to the lake of fire in Scripture because of their sins; they go to the lake of fire in Scripture because of their good works and if you don’t believe it, turn to Revelation 20:10, “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire,” this is the termination of the angelic conflict, “where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever. [11] And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. [12] And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened; and another book was opened.” All right, let’s get the picture, there are two sets of books, one set, plural, and another book, singular. “The books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life.” So that single book is called “the book of life.” “And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books,” plural, “according to their works,” plural, not according to their sins. Now there’s a reason for this and I’ll show you in a moment. The works that these people have done are recorded. God has all this recorded, and He has the reality of history, it’s all recorded there, reality, not the way you hoped it would be, not the way you wished it would be, the way it was. And this is what it is, the works, and they “were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”

Why judge an unbeliever on the basis of his works? It’s simple, it goes back to the gospel. Here you have God who is absolute righteousness and justice; absolute righteousness looks down upon unrighteousness and says death, this is Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death,” etc. When Jesus Christ died on the cross He took the sins of every person upon Himself, He was judged for all the sins of all the world, of every man, woman and child who will ever live or ever has lived, for every sin they ever will commit, period! All of it was totally judged by Jesus Christ. He picked up the tab of judgment. God did not arbitrarily forgive. That’s the point of Scripture, God doesn’t just say well I forgive you of your sins; He forgives according to rules and principles and the principle is that His righteousness was satisfied by Christ and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross solved the problem.

But look, you can’t have double jeopardy, if Jesus Christ paid for the sins, then the individual can’t pay for them; one or the other, but you can’t have both. So we come down t the final hour of history and what condemns these people is the fact that they have rejected the cross. What does it mean to reject the cross? It means that I am going to get to heaven, basically, on my own good works. So therefore these people have made a decision, they’ve gone negative volition toward grace, God offered a solution in Jesus Christ and they’ve rejected, I’m not going to accept God’s way. Positive volition they have accepted their own works and they have said I’m going to earn my way, and when I get to heaven God’s going to have to open the door because I’ve got a pile of 5,055 different good works and they’re just going to have to open the door, so I’ve got all my works here and they’d better open the door because I’m coming. Therefore these people have said I’m going to get there on the basis of good works, good works, good works. And this is why these people usually are self-righteous, and they’re usually people that are phony and usually are people who are trying to buy their way to heaven by good works. There’s a lot of that today, an amazing amount of it.

But what happens here? He is going to take those good works and say look, here’s My standard, if you want to go on the good works route some here; so the Lord Jesus Christ is going to say you said you wanted to go on the basis of good works, okay, My good works demands perfection and your works don’t live up to perfection and therefore you lose. And that’s what’s going to happen at the great white throne judgment. It is going to be a horrifying stripping of good works that people have trusted in over the years and thought they could hack it, and they have rejected the grace way, where Christ does the work instead of you. So this is why in the final day the people are judged out of the things in the books, their works and sins are not even mentioned. The reason sin is not mentioned is because Jesus Christ paid for all the sins on the cross and you can’t pay twice under double jeopardy. So no evangelist really has a right to scare you by saying your sins are going to condemn you. What’s going to condemn you is your own system that you have personally worked out as a substitute for Jesus Christ. That is what condemns. But it’s not personal sin; Christ has personally solved that.

So in conclusion to Solomon’s philosophy what do we say? That the answer to Solomon’s problem is given in God’s Word; it’s given in the fact that at a moment in time I can move out of this old creation and I can move above the sun and I can be in union with Jesus Christ forever; and I can do it in a moment of time by personally trusting in Him. And I can say, Father right now I don’t understand exactly all the details but I understand enough of the facts and they fit together so that I’m convinced of the truth of them, so now I can trust you because now I am convinced, and my conscience bears witness, and I have that confidence that You are behind Your word, that this is true, that Jesus Christ has paid for my problem and I can move on, and I can realize at this moment I don’t have to worry about generation 5055 good works because Christ has solved it.

There’s a problem of obedience after salvation and if I am a Christian I can do something else, I may be where Solomon was, I may be out in the toulies this morning, I may be miserable, my business may be going to pot, I may have all these problems coming in on me and yet I know there’s a solution and just as I am saved by trusting in God’s character through the principle of grace so I can be restored to fellowship through grace. And in a moment of time I can say I trust in the finished work of Christ to restore me to fellowship with Him. That’s 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just,” not only to forgive us our sins, a lot of people stop there, not only to forgive us our sins, but in addition, “to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And the problem you have as a Christian, do you believe 1 John 1:9; do you believe that if you confessed your sin and acknowledge your personal responsibility for those things that have gotten you out of fellowship that God at this moment can cleanse you totally. And whether you feel it or not, that’s what the Scriptures say, total cleansing, and it isn’t because you agonize in a closet, it isn’t because you eat birdseed, it isn’t because you do all sorts of other things, it is because you rely on the grace of God, the finished work of Christ and that alone. It isn’t in proportion to the number of hours you spend in prayer, it isn’t in proportion to the number of hours you spend standing on your head or something else, it is proportional only to one thing: do you trust in Jesus Christ.

With our heads bowed.