Ecclesiastes Lesson 25

Surviving Without Justice – 8:10-9:3

Turn to 1 Samuel 8 as an introduction to Ecclesiastes 8. We have to go to 1 Samuel 8 to obtain some historical background to understand the situation that Solomon was in. He is going to plea against social injustice, he is going to work along with the injustices in the society, but in order to understand why these are there, we have to go back to 1 Samuel 8 and some of the mechanics of the Old Testament theocracy. A little bit of Old Testament history is necessary to understand this passage. The first thing we have to understand is that in 1400 BC the theocracy, meaning the rule of God, was established over the nation Israel. Theocracy means that God is king; it means that the society, although ruled in part by Moses and his board of seventy elders, the real ruler and King of the nation was God Himself.

What did this mean? It meant that Israel was a unique society, at no time in history has there ever been a society quite like this one because God in ruling this society was able to adjust climate, various chemical actions in the soil, etc. to adjust their economic prosperity, because it was an agricultural based economy, so that miraculously God was able to work and move through not only the human means but through nature itself. And He ruled supernaturally through the temple so that if people would come there for the many tests that had to be done under the Law, God Himself would miraculously identify the guilty party and would miraculously clarify the innocent.

Now in 1 Samuel 8 something radical happened. It was in the year approximately 1020 BC that this theocracy received its major blow in the Old Testament. From 1020 on the theocracy was never the same, for in this time in history Israel decided they no longer wanted to trust the Lord for leaders. This is always the tendency, in fact this has happened in church history; instead of waiting for the Holy Spirit to work in individual people’s live to bring to the fore leadership, in waiting for the Holy Spirit to bring forth people that have the gift of leadership, that have the capacity as unto the Lord to take leadership responsibilities, to do a job, etc. instead of waiting for this people are always impatient and want to appoint somebody. People want to do this and people want to do that, and people have to have some appointment. And this is actually how many of the bishops were appointed in the first century of the church. Instead of waiting for a man who had the gift of pastor-teacher to emerge as the Holy Spirit worked in the church they became impatient, tried to run ahead of the Lord and appointed themselves human people, in which case you had established a fantastic hierarchy of officials. This hierarchy led, ultimately, to the destruction of the church by 400 AD in the sense that by that time the church was merged with the state, and has been except for the Reformation period ever since. The National Council is another case where the church has allied with politics.

So in 1 Samuel 8 we have the blow that was dealt to the theocracy in Israel. This blow is described in verses 4-9 of chapter 8. “Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel at Ramah,” now Samuel was a judge but he was not king. A judge was a man in whom there was a gift of the Holy Spirit, that judge was recognized, not because he was the son of someone but because he had a unique ability to deal with social situations and this ability was taken as a gift from God. It was identified through the priest and so on. Samuel got to his office, in other words, because he had charisma, or he had gifts.

Verse 5, they “said unto him, Behold, thou are old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways; not make us a king to judge us like all the nations.” Here’s where they made their first big mistake. In other words, they were too lazy and too impatient to wait until God would raise up a man with a right gift at that great time in history; they panicked and they said well, we’re not going to wait on the Lord, what we want to set up is a dynasty, like all the other nations.

Verse 6, “But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. [7] And the LORD said unto Samuel,” now this is the important part, verses 7-8, because in verses 7-8 you have the explanation of why there wasn’t justice in Solomon’s day. People wonder how could there be when Solomon was king. It was very simple, verses 7-8. “Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee; for they have not rejected you [Samuel], but they have rejected Me, that I should not malak over them,” now the Hebrew word malak is the Hebrew word to reign, which means to act as a king. So God, therefore was reigning up until 1 Samuel 8 as the king of the nation. At this point the people rebelled against His kingship, and verse 8, “According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken Me, and served other gods, so do they also unto you.”

Samuel is identified with the Lord and so therefore he got the [can’t understand word] just as well as God Himself. So at this point the divine kingship was rejected by the nation and a human king took his place. Now here is the mistake they made. In verse 10 and following you have one of the classic statements against centralization of power in the Word of God, for beginning at verse 10 Samuel enumerates the inevitable corruption that will come from and established highly bureaucratic, highly centralized government system. It is always going to be this way, it was at that time and Israel had a chance as no other society in history has had a chance to have freedom. They had one of the most perfect concepts of freedom that has ever gone on, including the ancient Greeks. The Greeks [not sure of word, sounds like: grief] was not the source of democracy; the Word of God was the source of the republican type of government with a constitution and certain limited areas of voting. That came actually out of the Old Testament, not through Greece.

But in verses 7-8 we have this tremendous mistake the nation made. God was rejected as king and so they installed a human king with centralized power. In verse 10 the problem with this; verse 11, “This will be the manner of the king who shall reign over you: he will take your sons,” they are immediately starting a draft, “and he will appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.” Now this is important here in verse 11 because here we have a situation where we have volunteers; there was a volunteer army here in this situation, this has never been in history successful except in Israel and certain other limited areas, a volunteer army where young men knew the obligation they had to the nation and they went out voluntarily and joined the army. But the king, because he would have corruption, because he wanted to fight wars that were not legitimate according to the principle of Deuteronomy 20, had to bring a draft in to coerce men into the army.

Verse 12, “And he will appoint for himself captains over thousands,” etc. this is one area of breakdown. Verse 13, “And he will take your daughters to be bakers, and to be cooks,” here you have a tremendous amount of civil workers, you have government workers by the carload. Verse 14, “And he will take your fields,” socialism, government ownership of means of production, in other words the government can’t provide for itself so now it has to steal property from individuals, “He will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive yards, the best of them, and give them to his servants.” Now that’s always the situation in socialism where you have centralization of power, the government will always give those things back or put them in communities that, of course, give the highest vote to the party in power.

Verse 15, And he will take a tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.” A government of such fantastic dimensions as Solomon would bring in would have to tax, tax, tax, tax, tax and tax to support itself. It’s the old story, Robin Hood starts off robbing the rich to pay the poor and finally he robs both the rich and poor alike to pay for Robin Hood. And that’s exactly what happened in every other situation in history where you have this kind of government formed. It’s always tax the rich first, but you watch it, sooner or later everyone gets it, everyone, and everyone winds up as a slave to the government, and that’s what Samuel warned against.

Now turn to Ecclesiastes and you’ll understand why the injustice under Solomon’s reign. Eccl. 8:10, this passage does not give us any new material, we have covered the seven major teachings of the book of Ecclesiastes, but it takes one of those teachings and develops it in tremendous detail. When I went over the teachings of the book of Ecclesiastes I said beside the various principles was that number one, Solomon’s problem began with negative volition spiritually. That problem resulted in the fact that he despaired of ever finding an absolute truth. This was the normal result, this has been the result through philosophy, particularly through 20^th century, a resignation over finding any worthwhile truth. Three, man is left, therefore, with only two things, his experience plus his logic to analyze his life, he has no divine viewpoint framework from revelation. Four, man is left with experience and experience proves there is minus morality, there is no such thing as an objective set of standards of right and wrong that exist through history, the bad person is always getting away with it, and so there’s no evidence from experience alone that there is such a thing as an operating moral absolute.

The fifth thing that we learn from this book is experience also shows that man can do nothing worthwhile, no matter how hard he tries, no matter to what cause he puts his life it always is vapor and vanity, there’s always a Monday morning hangover after it’s all done. The sixth thing, man is therefore left with only one goal, the summum bonum of man is immediate happiness; that is what man is left with, immediate happiness and that’s what Solomon says, eat, drink and be merry. Now he’s not advocating a life of hell-raising here, he’s advocating a life of moderation but one that will give pleasure in a very sane and sensible way. Seventh, man is left with an uncertainty whether he is significantly different from animals. These are the teachings of this book.

Now today we are going to take this teaching, number four, experience shows there is no operating moral absolutes and we are going to show how this works in history. Verse 10, “And so I saw the wicked buried,” now we are going to have to change the translation in verse 10, and we’ll change it slightly in verse 16, otherwise the King James translation is fairly reliable. “And so I saw the wicked being taken to their grave,” this is a funeral procession he is watching, “I saw the wicked being taken to their grave,” literally, “while they were going from the place of the holy, they were forgotten in the city.” Now the first change you have to make, instead of “I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone,” “I saw the wicked being taken to their grave.” (period) “While they were going from the place of the holy they were,” and we’ll stop there for a moment until we make the change. So he’s watching a funeral procession, the funeral possession began at the temple, the place of the holy, or the holy place, this is the temple, and when they moved back from the temple he was watching this funeral procession going along and he was saying these funeral processions are crooks, these people have robbed this city of Jerusalem black and white, they have completely taken everything out of it and these people get a hero’s funeral.

This is what he’s looking at, a hero’s funeral for the mafia. “And I saw the wicked being taken to their graves, while they were going from the holy place, and they were…” it’s not forgotten, but “they were praised.” Now you say how do I get praised out of the word “forgotten.” Well you have to go back to the Hebrew and in the Hebrew these words are very similar and you’ll see that we have a textual problem here. In the Hebrew the first word, “forgotten” looks like this, shakach; the word to praise looks like this, shalach, there’s only one difference, that little letter, and the textual manuscripts at this point are ambiguous, and it makes more sense to take it “praise,” so we take it “praise.” So here they are, during the funeral procession they are being praised and he says this is unfair, these people are wicked, why is it that they get a hero’s funeral in the city where they had done so; why didn’t the city where they had done their wicked works, he says in this city, of all places, as the funeral procession moved from the temple to the graveside, these people are getting praised. Now he says there’s something vain about that, or vanity; vanity is habel, which is the Hebrew word that means vaporous, has no substance to it, and this is how he describes human viewpoint. So in verse 10 he is agonizing about the problem of hero’s funerals for crooks, here is vanity, he says.

Now in verse 11 he goes on and makes a statement, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” And this is his gripe, that retribution does not work in history. And if you are honest you’ll see this. In other words, the wicked people do not get rewarded for their iniquity; the righteous people do not get rewarded in this life for their righteousness, oh, they do occasionally, enough to make it interesting, but as a general principle, no. And of course if you think so you’re a sentimentalist and a romanticist; the righteous people do not get rewarded I history, nor do the wicked. They get rewarded in another point which we’ll have to discuss after Solomon. But his point is in his experience, remember this book is written from the standpoint of “under the sun,” that is life lived from the time of your physical birth until the time that you die, looked at within that perspective, outside of the Word of God, in other words, without revelation from God about what’s after the grave, what’s going on in the spiritual dimensions of history, just looking at life from the normal naturalistic point of view, there is no retribution.

And he says in verse 11 this results in a behavior pattern because the sentence was not executed speedily, it means that men think they can get away with it, which leads to the attitude everything is right unless they get caught, in which case it becomes wrong. You can drive your car along through the speed limit and break it and that’s okay unless the policeman catches you, and that’s why people don’t like unmarked police cars. So here’s the question that Solomon brings up, where is retribution? Where is it, and he says I don’t see it.

Now in verses 12-13 Solomon does one of his switches; we have seen him do this several times in the book of Ecclesiastes and you’ve got to recognize these switches or you’re going to say oh, oh, conflict in the Bible. And there is a conflict here. Verse 12, “Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged,” and that’s the end of his first statement, “his days be prolonged.” Now he begins to quote something, “yet surely I know that it shall be well with them who fear God, who fear before Him; [13] But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow,” now there you have your contradiction. In verse 12 he says the sinner’s days are prolonged, in verse 13 he says that they are not going to be prolonged. How do we interpret that portion of the Scripture?

What Solomon is doing here in verses 12 and 13, what he has done back in chapter 2, let’s go back and see what he did back there, 2:13-14, this is why this wisdom literature is very difficult literature to work with, they don’t have quotation marks in Hebrew; if it was written in English we’d have our problem solved. But in verse 13-14 Solomon is quoting a classical proverb. See, here’s what he’s doing, he’s taking a classical proverb and he’s quoting it and then he’s discrediting it. Remember what he did in verses 13-14, “Then I saw that wisdom excels folly, as far as light excels darkness. [14] The wise man’s eyes are in his head but the fool walks in darkness,” in other words, praise the wisdom, let the idiots rot in their idiocy he’s saying. That’s the classical proverb. But then he adds, “but I myself perceived that one event happens to them all.” In other words, it doesn’t pay. So he added and tacked this thing on.

Now come over to chapter 8, he does the same thing. He starts out, however, this time with his observation. “A sinner does this thing a hundred times and his days are prolonged,” and then in a sarcastic way he quotes the proverb, yeah, he says, I know what the proverb says, the proverb says “that it shall be well with them that fear God, and the sinner is not going to prolong his days,” he says I know all about that proverb. But by the way he has introduced it in verse 12 you can tell he doesn’t believe it. The reason is the mechanics of the theocracy. Up until 1020 BC, up until this time it was true that God was working in a direct retributive way in history. It also is true that after that He did, but less so. And by Solomon’s day this was starting to break down, there’s a lag time between the time a man commits a crime in the Israelite society and the time he’s judged for it, until finally at the end there’s infinite lag time, he’s never judged for it. So we have a lag time in history between the problem of committing the wrong and receiving retribution for it.

So here is what his complaint is, verse 14, “There is a vanity which is done upon the earth, that there are just men, unto whom it happens according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous; I said that this also is vanity.” Here’s your vanity and here’s his complaint. He said if I look at history from my experience, using my logic, I cannot see retribution operating. I cannot see any evidence of a moral absolute in history, and he’s absolutely correct. If you look at history from the naturalistic point of view there is no moral absolute operating; none! And this is what Solomon is seeing and this is what we have to see because as Christians we have to see this to understand our own position. Vanity upon the earth, happening to both parties.

Then in verse 15 he recommends his course of action in view of all of this. “Then I commended mirth,” which means pleasure seeking, “because a man has no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry, and that shall abide with him in all his labor,” in other words, this will stay with him, this will keep his mental attitude up during the depression of everyday life. Instead of worrying about an absolute of a right and a wrong, he says, don’t worry about that; worry about your immediate happiness, that’s the issue. And this of course is a logical result, absolutely logical if his premises are correct, namely that life is to be lived according to a naturalistic point of view.

Now that you don’t see this as complete riotous living, that’s not what Solomon is saying, he’s saying let it be in moderation because moderation itself gives pleasure. If you turn back to 7:16-17 you see his balance. “Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself overwise. Why should you destroy yourself? [17] Be not wicked overmuch, neither be thou foolish. Why should thou divine institution before your time?” In other words, he’s saying don’t go to one extreme or the other, stay in the middle and that’s what he’s saying; stay between the right and the wrong because that’s the middle of the road and you’ll have maximum personal happiness in the middle of the road. That’s what Solomon is talking about. And that’s his counsel, which is absolutely logical if his starting point is true. This flows right out perfectly naturally. And so therefore he says the goal of immediate happiness, the summum bonum is perfectly legitimate.

Now in 8:16-17 he reiterates, in conclusion t this section he reiterates a principle of life that we are seeing operating in our society. “When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth, (even though that neither day nor night so one sees sleep with his eyes), [17] Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun….” Now in verse 16 there’s a slight translation correction. If you look at it, “when I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth,” you’ll see a parenthesis there. That parenthesis actually modifies the word “man” in verse 17, it’s ahead of the word “man” for emphasis. But within that parenthesis it should be, “(even though by neither day nor night one sees sleep with his eyes,)” in other words, he’s saying if you make this a 24 our search you don’t sleep, you search day and night, day and night, day and night, all the time, never sleep, even if you made a 24 hour search every day of your life, even then, he said, you cannot find out absolutely what’s going on; you cannot find out, you cannot get to the bottom of things.

You cannot reach, as we have said before, absolute truth, that is IF his premises are true. Absolute truth is unattainable and until you’ve attained absolute truth you haven’t reached the point where you know right from wrong, because what might be right for you now, here, in this situation, might not be right in another situation and you can’t tell on the basis of experience whether what you say now is right and it’s going to be right forever, you can’t tell that on the basis of your own experience. You see, there is no morality unless you can get back down to absolute truth; if you can’t, you might as well chuck morality. And this is what he’s done in verse 15; he is not saying that moral principles aren’t valid, what he is saying in verse 15 is that they are now pragmatic guides. In other words, take the idea, for example, sex, you have to watch it, you might get in trouble, that would be pragmatic guide. Now that’s transformed the morality of the act itself over into a pragmatic principle and that’s what he’s doing; he says these morality codes that people have are nice but only as working hypothesis, only as pragmatic guides. And of course, 99.9% of the American public believe this today, that there are no moral absolutes, there are no absolutes of any sort, moral or anything else, but there are just pragmatic guides. And of course this is logical if you start where Solomon starts.

Now you can see this again in our education system. I think one of the most ironic things in the 20^th century in our day is that the birds have come home to roost. For the last 50 years the educational system, particularly the college campus has knocked historic Christianity, has [can’t understand word] out of the classroom, and if you don’t think so you try and articulate historic Christianity on the college campus and you will find very rapidly how (quote) “open minded” they are. I did and I wound up in the dean’s office forty hours in my senior year in college because they don’t like it when someone is advocating historic Christianity, when someone is teaching the New Testament, they can’t stand it because we are teaching bigotry, we are teaching there’s such a thing as something right and nothing else is right. Jesus Christ said “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man comes unto the Father but by Me.” For a while that offended me, but that is the necessary corollary to absolute truth; gravity works and it always pulls objects down, and so if this is a law, a principle of the universe then it’s true, it’s not bigotry to say that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life, that no man comes unto the Father but by Him, He said it. So it’s not bigotry; it’s not bigotry, it becomes bigotry if you think there’s no such think there’s no such thing as absolute truth.

So when Solomon says “no man can find this thing out,” he has said in verse 16 that our educational institutions have found out, and so for years they have said in the classroom the Bible is unreliable, keep your mind open, and over and over again they said the purpose of an education is developing critical thought. NO, that is not the purpose of education. The purpose of education is developing critical thought in order to reach absolute truth. But it does no good to do critical thinking if there’s no absolute truth to find after all. What’s the good of a shovel if you have nothing to dig. That’s the point.

So I’m going to read to you several quotes which I think show, by people who are involved in the university and educational system today why verse 16 is important, namely, that once the educational system has given up the concept of an absolute truth, the result comes boiling to the surface and we may well live in our generation to see the destruction of higher education, but please remember if this happens who brought it on in the first place; it was the educational system itself. Listen to this; I am quoting from Jerry Rubin, who’s the head of the yippies, now those of you who don’t know what the yippies are, that is a group that is made up of hippies plus the new left, it was formulated by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and Jerry Rubin has written a very interesting book, if you can manage to read through four lettered words and pornographic photography long enough to read the text itself you will find a very interesting statement because he’s very frank and very honest where things are going.

Here’s what he says: “The university is a place for making it, a high pressure rat race, competition for grades, degrees, books, recommendations, getting into graduate schools and getting a good job.” Then he observed, “Babies are curious about everything; adults are serious and bored. What happened? Brain surgery by the schools. I lost my interest in books in literature class. I lost my interest in foreign languages in language class. I lost my interest in biology in biology class. Dig the environment of the university, the buildings look like factories, they’re designed to wipe out all individuality, dull one’s senses and make you feel small.” And then he adds this, which I think of all of the observations, I would agree with a lot of it, but here he makes a tremendous observation coming up here and if you catch this you’ll see what the student revolt is all about. (Quote) “Critical or abstract thinking is a trap in the schools; criticize, criticize, criticize, look at both sides of the argument, take no action, take no stand, commit yourself to nothing, because you’re always looking for more arguments, more information, always examining and criticizing. Abstract thinking turns the mind into a prison; abstract thinking is the way professors avoid facing their own social importance. Our generation is a rebellion against abstract intellectualism and critical thinking.” That is a very important quotation. “We admire the V-Cong guerilla, the Black Panther and the stoned hippie, not the abstract intellectual vegetable.”

Now if you start out with a non-Christian premise, and you can never get to absolute truth he’s exactly right; and this is why the educational system can’t handle men like Jerry Rubin because the educational system is operating on the same basis Rubin is operating on, namely, there is no such thing as an absolute. And if you both start off here, what’s happened? The university has come this far, Rubin has come this far; he started from the same basis but he’s moved off in a further direction, and he said if it’s really so that we can’t ever get to know truth, then what good does it do to keep asking questions. What good does it do to develop critical thinking and criticize and criticize and criticize hoping someday you’re going to get to the truth, IF you never can get to the truth. If you can’t get to the truth, there’s no sense asking the question. Don’t you see the logic; it’s a beautiful set of logic; beautiful. And Jerry Rubin is exactly right that if there’s no such thing as absolute truth on the college campus then why bother with the college campus? Why bother with it? Stop thinking, turn your mind off because it’s useless, you’ll never find anything worthwhile anyway. And that’s exactly what they’re saying and this is why it’s so frightening, because this movement, the new left, has taken the premises of the previous radicals out to a further conclusion, and the university administrations can’t do anything about it because by definition they have cut themselves off from historic Christianity. So they have said no to historic Christianity absolute truth, now they bear and reap the fruit.

Don’t you think just the hippies think this; what Rubin said here every student basically is saying because that’s what’s frightening; every student has some of these same frustrations Rubin has except Rubin takes them out to the logical conclusion. If the university can’t teach me something worthwhile, then why bother with it all; that’s what it’s saying. We’ve been saying this for years and it’s interesting that Rubin comes along and says it for us.

Now I have another quote, from [can’t understand word] student at Berkley in 1968, now this fellow was a genius. He had the highest academic honors at Berkley that you can get. And this is what he said after four years of study at Berkley. “My four years of university education, instead of helping me to become a man, have turned me into an unfeeling, unthinking, zombie, totally removed from the world outside my own specialized field. The student is surrounded by material things but he cannot enjoy them because of the void he finds in himself and in the people around him.” Read that last sentence again, this is the top student at Berkley, this is not a drop out, these students know what they’re talking about and have some brains. That’s what’s going on and it’s a normal process. Evangelicals have been preaching this for years and nobody would listen, so maybe now somebody will listen, because now the results are there; now the birds have come home to roost and the very college campus that started out destroying Christianity and setting up relativism itself is now the one that’s being destroyed.

Back to Solomon, 8:17, “Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun, because, though a man labor to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea, further, though a wise man think to know it,” college professors, “yet shall he not be able to find it” out. And operating on Solomon’s premise, cut off from the Word of God, that’s absolutely correct. You never can find absolute truth, you never can get down to the point where you at last discover truth and it’s not going to change by someone else’s discovery later on; it’s there, you’ve found something.

Ecclesiastes 9:1, “For all this I considered in my heart, even to test all this,” or “declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works are in the hand of God; no man knows either love or hatred by all that is before him.” The “love and the hatred” at the end of verse 1 is the love and hatred that God may have for that person. What he’s saying is that here I dwell, between my birth and my death, here I am and operating within this framework, with no word from God, judging just on the basis of experience, that’s all he has, experience, judging just from the basis of experience he says I can’t tell anything about how God views me. Really, he should have gone further, I can’t even tell that God is there. But we have two things he says, love or hate, and I can’t tell the way I am treated in history whether God loves me or whether He hates me.

Lesson to Christians: you cannot derive God’s feelings, attitudes toward you from your experience; you derive God’s attitude toward you from the Word of God, not from your experience, not because you go into your closet and contemplate your navel for three hours a day, or because you do something else, because you roll down the aisle and have a big ecstatic experience, that doesn’t tell you one iota about God, nothing. What tells you about God and His attitude toward you is what He’s told you, His Word, that you find only in the Bible. And that’s the only source of information about God’s attitude toward you. And Solomon says cut off from that, no man knows either love or hatred by all that is before them, you can take all the experience that you have before you and you can’t go from experience back to God; it’s impossible, absolutely impossible. You can’t say I know God loves me. What does that little song say? Jesus loves me, why, because the Bible tells me so, not because my feelings tell me so, or because something else tells me so, because the Bible tells me so.

Verse 2, “All things alike happen to all.” Here’s a central complaint, there is no concept of right or wrong in history, no absolutes, all things come alike to all. [“…There is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrifices, and to him that sacrifices not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that swears, as he that fears an oath.”] Verse 3, “There is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all;” and by now I think you can get the grasp of this passage, that you cannot go on the basis of your experience alone. [“…yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.”]

Some conclusions, turn to Luke 16. Here is how the Lord Jesus Christ would answer that, Luke 16:19. Solomon has presented us with a tremendous dilemma and it’s something that you just can’t brush off with a cheap answer. If you’re honest and you look at your life in history you will not find God judging evil; you will not find it. You’ll find it sometimes but not all the time, not an inviolable rule, not a moral absolute, you will not find it in history. So what do we conclude from this? In Luke 16 the Lord Jesus Christ teaches, He takes up from where Solomon leaves off. Solomon looked at life from birth to death; now let’s look at what the Lord Jesus Christ says in Luke 16 beginning at verse 19. The purpose of this story, it’s really a story, it’s not a parable, is to answer Solomon’s dilemma. Why is it that we don’t see evil judged? Does this mean that God doesn’t judge evil?

Jesus’ answer, verse 19, “There was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day. [20] And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who was laid at his gate, full of sores, [21] And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table; moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. [22] And it came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom; the rich man also died, and was buried. [23] And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. [24] And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. [25] But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime received the good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but not he is comforted, and thou art tormented. [26] And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that they who would pass from here to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from there.”

What is Jesus’ answer to Solomon’s dilemma? He says death is not the end, that there’s an eternity out here and that’s where the scales are adjusted. You have the justice here, here’s where justice is delivered. All of the imbalances that you observe in history are not neglected by God. If you want a very picturesque illustration of how these scales are adjusted, recall that in the book of Revelation there’s a scene in which the Lord Jesus Christ comes just before He’s going to come back to the earth, and He’s in the throne room of God, and it says the Lamb of God came to the incense, and there was an incense there and that incense, John says, was the prayers of the saints. And they took that incense and they poured it out. Why? The prayers of the saints are the prayers of people who have been oppressed in history, the believers who have been persecuted, those prayers have been stored up in this incense thing before the throne room, the book of Revelation, and that is stored there and this is what sets off the judgments of the Tribulation. So in the future there will be personal future and historical future; there will be justice. But Jesus says it’s an article of faith, you have to take it on faith, given the evidence you have from the Bible, that God is going to restore the balances and the balances are going to be in eternity.

That’s the only answer, and by the way, you have to have this, Luke 16 type of thing, you have to have a future judgment to maintain morality, to maintain moral absolutes. If you don’t, you might as well chuck it, just chuck it all the way. Turn to 1 Cor. 15, we’ll go back to Paul’s solution. And as we do this let’s recall our own personal attitudes in this area. I’m going to write two words: morality and pragmatism. Pragmatism means kind of play it by ear. Now test yourself, as we go through this, test yourself, do you operate on the basis of pragmatic guides or do you operate on the basis of inviolable moral absolutes. You may surprise yourself because the test is that the pragmatic basis is always directed towards man and is always a guide. In other words, are you more concerned about hurting people or are you more concerned about offending God. If you are more concerned about hurting people than offending God, you have a pragmatic guide. Remember, sin is directed only to God. Wrongs against men, yes, but you remember in Psalm 51 when David said, after committing adultery and murder, he said “Against Thee and Thee only have I sinned.” You cannot sin against men; you sin against God. And that’s the point about morality; it’s always directed to the essence of God. God is sovereign, righteousness, justice, love, and He has all the other attributes. Righteousness and justice are sometimes known in the Bible as holiness; that set the standards. If you look at that and say you are concerned about sinning before God’s being and His attribute of righteousness and justice you’ve got the concept. But if what strikes you is that you’re wronging people and that’s what’s most on your mind, it’s reverse, it’s exactly the opposite. The Bible places the highest emphasis on your offending God and less emphasis on the problem with men.

You say that’s going to lead to sloppy human behavior. Oh no it doesn’t. Oh no it doesn’t! If you are concerned about offending God the social problem will take care of itself. That’s why we’ve got social problems. If people were concerned about living their life privately, not before people, this is why as a pastor I have to watch it in the local church, we always every once in a while have a busybody that has to stick their nose in someone else’s business. In other words, part of my job as a pastor is to keep the big-noses down. Legalism has no place in Christianity, so if people will live their life before the absolute righteous standard of God you’ve got a solid base to work from and you’re not going to be worried about what people say, what Mrs. So and So…. Those problems will take care of themselves automatically; you live your life before God. If you can do that you’re got morality in the Biblical sense. If you can’t, you’ve just got social principles and you’re on the same basis as Solomon.

1 Cor. 15 gives us the same conclusion once again. Verse 17, “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain, ye are yet in your sins. [18] Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ are also perished. [19] “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” Do you see what’s happened now in verse 19, what Paul’s saying? Look, here’s your life, here’s this life, between birth and death, if in this life we have Christ only we are of all men most miserable. Why are you miserable? Why are you miserable if you [can’t understand word] to Christ just in this life? Do you know why? Because having Christ means you have a moral absolute and it means that sometimes you cut across the [can’t understand word] and it means you get hurt and it means that you don’t get immediate blessing from God. It means that you can live for Jesus Christ and get clobbered and clobbered and clobbered and clobbered and it seems like righteousness doesn’t pay. And if in this life only you have Christ, you might as well be honest Paul says, and just go out and relax, and as he says later on in verse 32, you might as well just go out and eat and drink like Solomon said. The choice is up to you. But the choice depends upon the overall framework.

Here is your choice; human viewpoint or divine viewpoint. Divine viewpoint gives you morality, absolute truth and it gives you suffering, and suffering which in this life is not just, and you’re going to experience injustice, and you’re going to get clobbered when you don’t deserve it, and you’re going to get clobbered again when you don’t deserve it. And if Christianity isn’t true, you’re fooled, an absolute fool to take all of this undeserved suffering; that’s what Solomon is saying, if Christian isn’t true, that’s what Paul’s saying. And be willing, if Christianity isn’t true, you might as well come over here to Solomon, eat, drink and immediate happiness should be your goal. It all hangs on whether Christianity is true or not. If Jesus literally physically rose from the dead, then it pays off; if He didn’t then it doesn’t. But don’t entertain what I call the muddle romantic middle, and I would say too many people operate right here, right in the middle. They say oh, I live a moral righteous life, and I go along as though I’m a Christian; I don’t really care whether it’s true or not but I just live this way. Solomon would say you’re an idiot, if Christianity isn’t true just try to get what you can out of life now; if it is true, then this; “as a man thinks in his heart so is he.” With our heads bowed.