Ecclesiastes Lesson 26

Do it While You Can – 9:4-12

Ecclesiastes 1 as an introduction to chapter 9. We are reviewing the summary of this book of Ecclesiastes in 1:3-11. This is a summary of the book, and we go back to this summary to pick up a principle that we have seen periodically but comes to the fore in chapter 9. It’s a most important principle because it sets this book apart from those people who are plunging into the same despair that Solomon went. Solomon is a greater realist than anybody in our day, for in verses 3-11 he says this. “What profit has a man of all his labor which he takes under the sun.” In other words, considered from the naturalistic point of view, without looking at eternity, man has no significance. What profit is there that you can take out of this life into the next, if there is one, he says.

And then he starts in with a droning passage that you false communicate it probably until you’ve read it in the Hebrew, but it’s monotonous enough in the English. But when you read it in the original Hebrew the words are selected to deliberately increase the droning affect. And so it’s like a record that’s cracked, and every time the record goes around the needle jumps the track and goes back into the same old thing, it goes round and round and you get this terrifically droning passage.

Verse 4, “One generation is passing away, and another generation is coming, but the earth stays there forever. [5] The sun has arisen and the sun has gone down, and is now hastening to the place, only to rise immediately. [6] The wind is going toward the south, it is turning about to the north; it whirls about continually, going all the while and the wind returns again according to its paths. [7] All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full. Unto the place from whence the rivers going, there they continue to go. [8] All things are weary; man cannot utter it. The eye cannot be satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. [9] Whatever has been is that which shall be, and whatsoever has been is that which shall be done. There is no new thing under the sun. [10] If there be anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new, it has been done already of old time, which was before us. [11] There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of those things that are to come with those that shall come hereafter.”

In this passage Solomon destroys the great retreat that our generation has out of despair. Our generation has one retreat and we are called upon as Christians to close the door, to destroy this game of modern 20^th century man; when he is faced with the dilemma that Solomon faced, he escapes through the door of evolution and they say things are going to be better, and so he retreats. This is why evolution is taught in schools, it’s not because of the biological facts; it’s taught because of its philosophical and religious importance. And don’t ever let some educator tell you that this is some scientific truth; it’s a religious truth and that’s only why its taught in the school system; that’s why it’s caught on to the whole academic establishment, because man demands it. Anyone who is acquainted philosophy knows evolution, it’s as old as man. And it didn’t start with Charles Darwin, it started centuries and centuries ago because logically it’s the only philosophy that can possible give man hope apart from divine creation.

So here we have Solomon smash the idea, he says that’s nonsense, there is no new thing under the sun, there never will be, and there never has been. So Solomon cuts off this avenue of escape and leaves you sitting there, in a moment in time with no memory of the past and no assurance that you are going to be personally remembered in the future. He boxes you in and as the pages go by and the chapters go on in this book, slowly but surely Solomon is building a prison around the natural man. So now the natural man has no escape, the natural man might say yes, I live because my memory will live on in my children, if I live a good life it will at least inspire the next generation. Solomon says nonsense, there’s no remembrance, he says in verse 11, of things that are to come or things that have been with those that shall come after. If you’re living for your children forget it, it’s a waste of time, he says, from the naturalistic point of view. You do not live on in your children. And he says you may have some effect but you don’t live on, not like you would like to. So this is shut off.

There’s no change under the sun, there’s no new thing under the sun. He’s absolutely right, there hasn’t been since creation. There’s no new thing, there’s diversity but no great emerging. This is where the doctrine of creation in Scripture collides head-on with the doctrine of evolution. There’s no compromise, there’s no meeting of the two. And here Solomon shatters the stakes, the psychological gimmicks that people have erected to retreat out of the morass of despair that you are led into once you give up the Word of God.

Carefully note once again verses 10-11 and then we’ll turn to chapter 9. “Is there anything more that may be said, See, this is new? It has been already of old time, which was before us.” There is no new thing, he says, under the sun, and viewed from a naturalistic point of view, remember the proverbial literature, this is wisdom literature in the Bible, wisdom literature is not doctrine [can’t understand word] wisdom literature in the Bible is built up from empirical observation and Solomon says when I look at life empirically, experimentally, and I check it out with my open and not with my eyes closed through drugs or something else, when I look at this with my eyes open this is what I see, there is no new thing under the sun. And then verse 11, “There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of those things that are to come.” Now turn to chapter 9.

As I said, this probably is the emotional climax of this book. The rest of the book goes on and describes certain proverbs but here Solomon’s anger spreads out. When you read this in the original you can’t help but be struck with the man, that he’s throwing the words out at you here, he’s mad, he’s angry, and then he gives his advice in verse 7-10, they’re short, staccato utterances, and he just throws them out, one after another, do this, do it, go ahead, he says, and that’s the mood that this is written in.

He starts in verse 4 and from verse 4-12 Solomon is handling the problem of a limited life, living life with its limitations. We’ve had so far, since chapter 7 verse 26, surviving women, and in the last part of chapter he dealt with women; then in the beginning of chapter 8 he dealt with surviving in politics, and then in the last part of chapter 8 he dealt with the problem of surviving injustice. Now he comes to the last thing, and he says you’ve got your life, and if you look at it realistically you’ve got limitations. And if you’re not closing your eyes, if you’re not just listening to a lot of music and drugs so you can close off your mind against the reality, it’s here, and here it is in all of its bruteness.

Ecclesiastes 9:4, “For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope,” and the reason why he does this is because Solomon does not counsel suicide; he says life is bad but he says we don’t know what goes on the other side of the grave so we might as well stay alive, at least we know this life, that if you go on living you can eek out some enjoyment. That’s what the hope mentioned in verse 4 is, at least you are certain of some fulfillment in this life, you’re not with death. So therefore Solomon would not counsel suicide, he would counsel staying alive and struggling it out the best you can. “For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion.” We have transformed that proverb in our day to a live chicken is better than a dead hero, and that’s basically what this proverb says. A dog in the ancient world was the lowest of the animal kingdom; the lion was considered the highest. So he deliberately takes the lowest and sets it in with the highest. He says “a living dog is better than a dead lion.” And that is a proverb, he is quoting another proverb here in verse 4.

Verse 5, “For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything,” and this is his reason, beginning in verse 5 you have his reasoning, he says the reason why I say that it’s better to go on living in spite of all of the despair, in spite of all of the injustice is that at least you have the experience of knowing something, even if it’s only knowing that you’re going die. You have consciousness, in other words, and Solomon says consciousness, self-consciousness is important and at least you have this when you’re living, so why not go on living, even though you know nothing perhaps, other than the fact you’re going to die. But then he says there are two disadvantages of being dead; one is that you don’t know anything, there’s cession of consciousness. Now we’re going to deal with the problem of afterlife after I get through this passage, but remember, this is looking at life from “under the sun,” this is looking at life from the unbeliever’s point of view. “The dead do not know anything,” and it’s a continuous thing, there’s nothing they know, absolutely nothing.

And secondly he says, “they have not any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.” In other words, he closes off the last avenue of escape, and a person might react to Solomon and say yes, I know, but when I die at least my reputation lives on, and he says no it doesn’t, your reputation doesn’t live on, there’s nothing there. You can see this, for example, in many situations in history, you can see it in the church of Jesus Christ, you can see it in secular institutions, you can see it families, when the man who founded the particular firm and the man who was the head of the family dynasty, when he dies something happens, and very rarely, less often than more often, do the sons perpetuate the father’s work; less often! And that’s what Solomon says, the memory drops out and so you haven’t even got that to look forward to, not only a cession of consciousness but a cession of memory. You have to feel the darkness that Solomon is painting here, this is a black picture and he’s painting it with big thick gobs of black paint so that you’ll understand the riches and the joy that you have in Jesus Christ. And you will also have sympathy for those who have not yet received Christ.

Verse 6, “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy are now perished” this means personality influences, the love, the hatred and the envy, all of the evidences of influence of personality on peers and other people, this is all gone, it’s now perished, it’s a perfect tense in the Hebrew, it’s completed, they’re dead and it’s all over. And “neither have they any more a portion forever in any thing that is done under the sun.” Please remember in the Old Testament there was no heaven; when a person died in the Old Testament they went to Abraham’s bosom, the first man in heaven is Jesus Christ in His resurrected humanity. In the Old Testament the people who died did not go to heaven; they’re in heaven now but they didn’t go there initially, they went to a place called Abraham’s bosom, explained in Luke 16.

So in the Old Testament since there was no heaven they didn’t look forward to the grave; the grave to them was not victory at all, and when they looked forward, they looked like this: they died, they went to the grave, and the Old Testament saints couldn’t see anything in this interval until the resurrection; that was his hope, when his body would be risen from that grave. There was no intermediate, like today when a person dies his body goes to the grave, the soul goes to be in the presence of the Lord, down to the point of the rapture, his body is raptured out of the grave to be in the presence of the Lord, etc. You have this experience, in the presence of the Lord, 1 Cor. 5. But that was not true of the Old Testament saint. So to him there was nothing in the grave; probably these people slept in sort of an unconscious state; we get this, for one reason when Samuel is called up by the witch of Endor, Saul through the witch of Endor, Samuel says Saul, why did you disturb me, as though he was sleeping in the grave and Saul woke him up or something. So these Old Testament saints then evidently had a very peaceful but kind of non-conscious existence in the grave, in Sheol, in Abraham’s bosom.

So this is why in verse 6 he says, “they had no more portion forever in any thing that is done under the sun,” you are removed from history at the instant of death; if this line represents history while you are living you are embedded in the stream and can influence history, that’s Christianity. You have volition and volition is the most important thing you have; volition means that you can personally change history as a result of your choices. You can change your eternal destiny by a choice of believing in Jesus Christ. In an instant of time history is totally and completely reversed when you receive Christ as your Savior. So you can change and influence history by an act of the will, responding to God’s grace. You can do that, but you can’t when you die, and this is why in the New Testament even it says that death is the last enemy. Why is death considered the last enemy? Death, in the New Testament, is considered to be the last enemy because it cuts off your ministry and after you die you have lost your opportunity, you’ve lost it and you can’t change it; if you haven’t personally decided to receive Christ as Savior at the point of death you will never receive Christ as Savior. If you haven’t decided to get with the Word of God and go with the divine viewpoint framework, you will be a spiritual stunted example through all eternity. And this is what goes on; death cuts off your opportunity and this is what he says, you have no portion whatever in history. You’ve been excluded from history, you’re a dropout.

Verse 7, now we come to the central section and in this section Solomon hits one after another, very rapidly and he gives counsel for despair. And in this counsel for despair he goes through very short ejaculations, imperative verbs, like this, one quick one, here, here, here, that’s the way it looks, one right after another in rapid succession. And here is the only advice that he can give to you looking at life from the human viewpoint, looking at life without a frame of reference, looking at life as though it existed only from the time you were born until the time you die from a totally naturalistic point of view, this is all that he can suggest to you. “Go your way, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart,” and in the Hebrew the emphasis is on “joy” and “merry heart,” not what you drink, not what you eat. The emphasis is on how you eat it, the mood that you eat it in, and he’s saying your joy is limited to the mundane things so do these things in as pleasurable way as possible; these things are all you’ve got so you might as well do them with joy, maximize your inner pleasure in other words, is the counsel of verse 7. Go your way and do these things with joy.

Now there’s one thing to remember about this, that he’s not advocating hell-raising; again, turn to 7:16-18; Solomon is not counseling this; he is simply saying maximize your individual joy, but if you look at life realistically you can’t maximize your individual joy and go out and tear everything apart. “Be not righteous overmuch, neither make yourself overwise. Why should you destroy yourself? [17] Be not wicked overmuch, neither be thou foolish. Why should you die before your time?” Why should you die before your time, see, it’s a golden mean, and he says experience will teach that you can maximize your individual of steering a middle-of-the-road path, neither going out and being hyper-righteous or going out and sinning in a continuous fashion.

Back to 9:7, this is the balance, he says it is possible to get some pleasure, eat your bread with a smile in other words. Then he says this enigma; at the end of verse 7 there’s a strange clause injected, and it sounds completely heretical until you understand this book. “Go your way, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for” explanation, “God has already accepted thy works.” “God has already accepted thy works,” what does he mean by God having already accepted this kind of living. This isn’t spiritual living, why is this so acceptable to God? Because to Solomon, remember what he’s done with God; Solomon has destroyed the Word of God, he is minus divine viewpoint framework with the result that the word “God” means fate, or it means the design of fate, and so for him in this book, what he has done is that he has taken the word “God” applied it… he believes in God, like a lot of believers and a lot of unbelievers today, not as a person, God has just designed it, that’s all, and he says God has designed life this way so you can eek a little happiness out of eating bread once in a while and drinking some wine. Since God has designed it, use it. That’s what he’s saying, God has approved it because God has designed it this way. In other words, you derive the theory that God has approved something because God has made it possible. Incidentally, he’s doing here what a lot of Christians do, wake up in the morning and say well, I feel bad so I’m not going to study the Word of God today because after all God made me feel bad so that must mean God doesn’t want me to study the Word; the same kind of thing, that God has accepted it.

In Ecclesiastes 2:24-24 you’ll see how this principle, that God is the designer, plays such a tremendous role in man’s thinking. “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.” Now watch what he says, “This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God,” there you have God coming into the picture again, as the designer, the one responsible for the design of life so it works out this way. [25] “For who can eat, or who can abstain, apart from Him?” “Who can abstain apart from Him,” in other words, God allowed the opportunity so it must be okay with him.

In 3:13 you see the same thing, “And, also, that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God.” God has designed life that way so he has approved it. 5:18-20, came thing, “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 takes under the sun all the days of his life, which God has given him; for it is his portion. [19] Every man to whom God has given riches 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. [20] For he shall not much remember the days of his life, because God answers him in the joy of his heart,” in other words God gives him some pleasure so this shows that God is answering. So again and again, 7:18 is another reference on the way that God has designed things, “It is good that thou shouldest take hold of one, yea, also from the other withdraw not thine hand,” in other words, middle-of-the-road, don’t get too sinful and don’t get to righteous, “for he that fears God shall accomplish them all,” in other words, he that falls into God’s plan, viewed from Solomon’s human viewpoint, he that falls into God’s plan this way is one who endures God.

So when we come back to 9:7, when he says that “God has accepted thy works” he means that God has designed your life so that you can eek out some pleasure this way, therefore by definition God has already approved it.

Now verse 8 is a very, very interesting verse because of the images. “Let thy garments be always white, and let they head lack no ointment.” Now “let thy garments be always white” is a very powerful statement. This statement means, from the culture of the time, to live as though you are accepted with God. You see verse 7 has ended, “God has accepted thy works,” and so now you wear white clothing and white clothing in the ancient world was a sign of acceptance. Let’s look at some passages of Scripture that prove this. Turn to Revelation 7:9, here are the saints in heaven; notice, “After this I beheld and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues,” languages “stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.” Turn to Revelation 3:4, you have the same picture, speaking to the church at Sardis, “Thou hast a few names even in Sardis that have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with Me in white; for they are worthy. [5] He that overcomes, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before His angels.” The white clothing is the clothing of acceptance.

Turn to Matthew 22:11; see, the Bible has unity to it, so often in the school system and so on they treat the Bible as though it were just a collection, sort of an anthology, or a short story. That’s not true, the Bible has absolute unity. “And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. [12] And he said unto him, Friend, how did you get in here, not having a wedding garment? And the man was speechless. [13] Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” That’s not a very good way to treat a guest at a party, but this illustrates the point, proper clothing is a requirement for acceptance.

Now we have one more and with this we will show you what the white clothing is. Turn to Zechariah 3:1-7, this is the story of the high priest, Joshua; here’s Jesus Christ before He was incarnate talking to Zechariah and He gives Zechariah a vision. “And He showed me Joshua, the high priest, standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.” The word “Satan” is a word that means accuser in a court. [2] “And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan; even the LORD, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke thee. Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? [3] Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel.” Now the word “filth” is excrement if you want the choice translation from the Hebrew, it’s excrement, “garments covered with excrement, and stood before the angel,” the Hebrew is very picturesque, I always want to make sure you get the picture.

Verse 4, “And he answered and spoke unto those who stood before him, saying, Take away the garments of excrement from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment. [5] And I said, Let them set a clean turban upon his head. So they set a clean turban upon his head, and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the LORD stood by,” Jesus Christ. So we now have this man, Joshua, the high priest, clothed. What is the white garment? The white garment, let’s look at first from the standpoint of the culture of the time. The white garment was a garment worn because you were accepted in a group; it’s the garment of acceptance.

But theologically it came to mean something far more profound than just acceptance. It meant and refers to the essence of God. God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is love, God is omniscient, God is omnipresent, God is omnipotent, immutability, eternality, that’s the character of God. In order to be acceptable with God you have to match His perfect righteousness. You don’t have perfect righteousness, I don’t have perfect righteousness. The only way we can have perfect righteousness to answer to God’s righteousness is through the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. And this is why we have a doctrine in the Bible called imputation. The doctrine of imputation means that God credits to your account Jesus Christ’s absolute righteousness. You didn’t get it because you did 10,000 things, because you enrolled in church membership, because you did this, that or something else. You got it as an act of divine grace credited to your account. This is the white garment, imputed righteousness. Now you are acceptable to God; now God can talk with you without being offended by your filth. And in the tone of the passage it means that in God’s sight you appear as though you are covered with excrement from head to foot. That’s the picture the Bible has of you. So those of you who like to fan yourself on your self-righteousness, just remember, this is God’s picture of your self-righteousness, excrement—straight from the Bible. So imputation is the answer to that problem of self-righteousness. I should take you to Isaiah 64 and tell you what that means but I don’t want to offend a mixed congregation. The Bible has choice pictures of your unrighteousness before God and the only way of solving the problem is to remove the garment, remove the stained garment; this is an indelible stain and there must be another garment put on.

So now when we come back to Ecclesiastes we have a complete travesty of the doctrine of imputation, a complete travesty. Remember this man is looking at life from the human viewpoint and so he says go your way, eat your bread, do this, this is the way life is, eek out, and [9:8] “Let your garments always be white,” in other words walk around as though you were accepted with God, walk around as though you had perfect acceptance because psychologically this is healthy for you. And here it becomes just a psychological exercise, completely rooted in nothing. Walk around with white garments, big deal, what do white garments mean, they mean nothing unless Jesus Christ gave you the garments. And so he says you just go ahead and do this because there’s no sense in letting your conscience be tortured by questions of whether you have personally accepted the Lord or not, just walk around in white garments as though you are, that’s all; self-hypnosis.

By the way, the first time this happened in history, do you know when it happened? In the Garden of Eden, operation fig leaf; no clothes so they had to put clothes on, fig leaves. And then what happened? Jesus Christ came in the Garden and replaced their fig leaves with a suit, and that’s the meaning of that story, it’s not just a cute little story to be told in Sunday School, the suit is the imputed righteousness of Christ. When Jesus Christ walked in that Garden and He gave the clothing to Adam and Eve He had to kill to get the skin to clothe; He had to slay, therefore the first blood spilt in history… remember this, the first blood spilt in history was spilt to provide clothing for man. No one had ever murdered, there had been no biological decay in the animal or plant kingdom until this time when Jesus Christ personally executed; the first killing in history was done by Jesus Christ and was done out of His love for man, to kill an animal to provide a coat because fig leaves don’t hack it. And that’s the same thing here, these are Solomon’s fig leaves in verse 8. You might take an inventory and find out what your fig leaves area.

Ecclesiastes 9:8, “Let your garments always be white, and let your head lack no ointment.” Here again is the same idiom, the head lacking ointment means to walk around as though you’re happy, etc. might as well get the psychological advantages out of it. Now if you want to see why this is so devastating, turn to the Gospel of Matthew and I will show you several situations where people did what Solomon told them to do, people that followed this philosophy exactly, of believing they were acceptable to God when they had no basic evidence that they were.

Matt. 7:21, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s funny, everybody says I believe in the Sermon on the Mount and never read it; “Not every one that said unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of My Father, who is in heaven. [22] Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name have cast out demons? And in Thy name done many wonderful works? [23] And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you;” not that He didn’t know them sometimes but He never knew them, there wasn’t a point in history when Jesus Christ knew these people and yet they were able to carry on with a lot of Christianity, they were able to carry on with a lot of religion and yet Jesus Christ personally never, never knew them, not once, “I never knew you,” get out of here, “depart from Me, you that work iniquity.” Now this is a horrifying thing because these people thought they were accepted. There’s not a shred evidence in here, in verses 21-23 that the people were insincere; these people were sincere, they put time and effort into their religion, they were absolutely sincere and yet the shock, just like cold water, just comes splashing in in verse 23, “I never knew you,” get out of here. Can you imagine the tremendous shock.

You see this shock again in chapter 25 of the same gospel. I want to show you the shock of judgment, and the shock of judgment is precisely the type of Solomon’s advice, walking around in white garments when you have no right to wear white garments. All these people who think religion is psychological will find out. Matt. 25 isn’t going to be pawned off as a bad trip.

Matt. 25:41-46, “Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Get away from Me, you cursed ones, into everlasting fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; [42] For I was hungry, and ye gave Me no food;” speaking of the Jewish believers in the Tribulation, “I was thirsty, and you gave Me no drink; [43] I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited Me not. [44] Then shall they also answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?” That shows their surprise, when did we see You? In other words, had they seen Jesus, the implication is, they would have done something. So therefore they thought everything was all right, when did we see You, Lord. [45] “Then shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me. [46] And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” And there was a shock there because they genuinely and sincerely thought they were all right and Jesus comes in and says no, get away from Me.

We find the same thing in Luke 12:15, “And He said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness; for a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things that he possesses. [16] And He 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 place to bestow my crops? [18] And he said, This I will do, I will pull down my barns and build greater ones; and there will I bestow all my crops and my goods. [19] And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, Eat, drink and be merry. [20] But God said unto him, stupid, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be, which thou has provided.?” Stupid is what he calls him; now that’s the Biblical language and all this bluntness and clarity, you see, people thought they were acceptable with God, they thought because they wore white garments they had “ointment on their head,” just like Solomon counseled.

Let’s turn back now and see how far out Solomon goes in chapter 9. That’s exactly what this man was doing, [verse 8] he was eating his bread with joy, drinking his wine with a merry heart, thinking all the while that God had accepted his works; [verse 9] he let his garments be white and he let his head lack no ointment, just like the workers of iniquity, Jesus said “Get out of here, I never knew you.”

Verse 9, I’ve heard this used as advice to the newly married but whoever uses this for advice to the newly married doesn’t recognize what context it’s in because they never finish the sentence. “Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest,” that’s usually where it stops, and of course I always love to spoil it and say, yes, “all the days of the life of thy vanity.” This is the old classic illustration of people that love to take the Bible out of context. “Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of the life of thy vanity,” in other words, you can get some joy out of marriage, Solomon isn’t one that’s too gung ho on the subject as you saw from chapter 7, he had a thousand women and he couldn’t find one of them that satisfied him; that was his problem, he tried a thousand times. He tried to get the right woman by multiplicity; you don’t get the right woman by multiplicity; you get the right woman by divine guidance.

“Life joyfully with the wife whom you love” and the implication is…it might be here, we can’t be dogmatic but it might be here that you may have many wives, and he’s addressing the men who may have many wives and he says pick out the one that you can enjoy the most and live with her. “…which he has given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity;” see it’s repeated again, the Hebrew way of emphasis, they don’t underline in the Hebrew, they repeat. And here for emphasis he repeats “all the days of thy vanity; for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labor which thou take under the sun. [10] Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with thy might;” now I’ve heard verse 10 taken out of context, I’ve heard Christians use verse 10, well this means that whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord. That’s true advice but you don’t want to get that out of verse 10 because that’s not what verse 10 is talking about. Look at verse 10, “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol, where you’re going.” See what that’s talking about. Get as much now as you can, that’s what it means, do it, do it now, live in the now the “now generation,” forget the past, don’t sweat the future, live now and get it now. So here Solomon is very modern in verse 10, extremely modern, “do it with all your might,” in other words, get the most out of it that you possibly can.

And of course, he’s absolutely right; for example if you’re here today and you have not received Christ as your Savior, or if you’re here and you’re a lackadaisical Christian, all you have to do is take your age, whatever it is, subtract it from 70 and that’s the number of years you have left, figure out what you’ve done with your years up to now. What have you done during all these years? And you’ve only got this many left so you’d better start figuring out what’s going to happen; are you going to waste the rest of your years like you’ve wasted it up to this moment or not. Apart from the plan of God life is a waste of time; I discovered that early. If you’re not under God’s will, your life is wasted; so you get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee and do something else, absolutely meaningless, just a set of events going on like monotony, just one after another, that’s all it is, that’s a waste of time.

Verse 11-12 now, his conclusion. Solomon returns to his original problem, the problem that life, not only is limited but it’s filled with injustice. “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.” In other words he’s saying here in verse 11, there is no retribution. He said that last time, he comes back to it here in verses 11-12. Given experience you have no morality in the sense of an absolute right and wrong.

I want to go through this word “absolute” and another word, “pragmatic” for you because I want you to know the difference. When I talk about an absolute R&W [right and wrong] and a pragmatic R&W, I am talking about two entirely different things and you ought to check your own thinking out on this point. One is divine viewpoint, the other is human viewpoint. Now this is what I mean. Pragmatic right and wrong is Solomon, he’s saying yes, there are certain behavior patterns that are beneficial socially and psychologically, yes. Now that’s pragmatic right and wrong. If you behave a certain way because you think it’s psychologically helpful, socially helpful, or some other thing, if you’re living your life on the basis of the fact of psychology and society, this is a pragmatic right and wrong. In other words, statistically, nine out of ten times you should do it because that’s the right thing to do in this situation. You’re living on the basis of social dynamics and psychological dynamics. If you live this way, repeat—you do not have absolute right and wrong.

What is an absolute right and wrong? An absolute right and wrong means that you have in your conscious mind a concept of God’s absolute righteousness and justice and you’re not living social, psychological, you’re living in front of that [His righteousness and justice], that’s what’s staring you in the face. And so when we talk about absolute right and wrong we’re talking about God’s attribute of righteousness and justice expressed to me. In other words, I am staring God in the face, not man. If you live your life and say well, you do thus and such because it’s socially acceptable, we do thus and such because it’s psychologically beneficial, we do thus and such because that’s the thing to do, we do thus and such because that’s good manners, we do thus and such because of this and that, it’s a bunch of bologna; you’re living pragmatically.

But if you live with the idea, what does God want me to do, and I frankly could care less what the government, anybody else wants me to do, that’ll turn out in the end that you do what God wants you to do and you won’t be trouble in the other areas; now that’s true. But what I want you to see is don’t live on this horizontal plain of considering right and wrong in terms of society and psychology because there’s a principle in the Word of God sin is always vertical, never horizontal. You cannot sin against anybody, absolutely not, it’s impossible to sin against a person. You sin only against God; you do not, repeat, you do NOT sin against people; you do not sin against society. Reason: because of the principle of jurisprudence. I asked a lawyer friend of mine, if you break a law and I violate it and go out here and commit a crime, who is it against, the person or the victim, or is it against the people who made the law? It’s against the people who made the law, because if there’s no law there there’s no crime there. I could go out here and kill, but as far as society is concerned, and psychology is concerned it wouldn’t be wrong unless there’s an ordinance in the city that prevents murder. If there’s no ordinance it’s not murder any more. You say yes it is; yes, in God’s sight, I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about living life on the horizontal plain; if society hasn’t made a law it’s not a crime.

Why is it a crime? When you commit a crime it’s against the lawmaker. All right, sin is a crime in the Word of God, it’s a special crime and it’s a crime against His righteousness and justice as expressed in the Word. So this is why in Psalm 51 when David had committed adultery, murder, and do all sorts of things, lie, cheat, mislead national foreign policy, etc. David could say with all truth in Psalm 51, “Against Thee, and Thee only have I sinned.” He did not sin against Bathsheba, he did not sin against Uriah, he did not sin against Israel, he did not sin against anybody. This is why Samuel, when he prays, remember he said, God forbid that I should sin against you in ceasing to pray for you? No, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you. Sin is always Godward, never manward. Get that concept and you have absolute morality. If you don’t have that concept you are operating on a pragmatic basis and you are no different from the unbeliever. Now you ought to do a check, a mental check, and ask yourself, do you have absolute right and wrong before divine essence, or do you have a pragmatic right and wrong before society and before man. Now it’s one or the other and every person in this congregation, if we did a survey, one or the other would be your guiding system.

Now this is important because a lot of the people today are growing up in the “me generation” and they’re saying let’s chuck your morality, and they’re absolutely right if it’s just morality. If just society, then I’m all for the student rebel, because as far as that’s concerned, society doesn’t tell me anything. Society doesn’t tell me what to do and what not to do; I do what I do before the Lord, that’s why, not before society. And so as Christians, you and I in our life, 24 hours a day, ought to be a testimony to the rebellious generation, that we don’t kowtow to any establishment, it’s not that we behave (quote) “nicely” because of the establishment; we behave (quote) “nicely” because we live our lives before God, not before the establishment. Always make that clear, otherwise you as a Christian are going to be identified with just sheer conservatism for the sake of conservatism, for the sake of conservatism because you will be identified with people who are just trying to preserve a tradition, the morality of your fathers, and they say who cares for the morality of our fathers. Always make it clear when you talk to someone, when you witness to someone, if you are a believer you live your life before the Lord, not before man. You are a law abiding citizen but not because of the establishment; you are a law abiding citizen because you have to live your life before God, Rom. 13:1-6.

It’s an entirely different thing, and had Christianity been advocating this over the past twenty years I’m sure there would be a tremendous difference in the student rebel, but he doesn’t see that; he sees the average Christian as someone who’s licking the beat for the establishment, because we haven’t made clear the fact that we live our lives before the Lord. When I walk into a group of people and they may have hair down to their ankles, I don’t care, I have my hair the way God wants me to have it, men are supposed to have short hair in the Word of God. Jesus Christ did not have long hair like artists paint Him. Jesus Christ had short hair; you can see it on every archeological [can’t understand word], the men of Israel had beards, but they did not have hair down to their shoulder and armpits. They had hair that was long by our standards but it was not down to their shoulders. And there’s a reason for it and it’s sexual; it’s to identify the sex, and it also is spiritual because it has to do with the identification of the male versus the female before God’s presence. And there’s a definite reason for it. This is the reason I have my hair cut, if you don’t like it, lump it; now that’s different from saying I cut my hair because everybody else cuts it that way. You have a reason for it and you do it as unto the Lord, and that has respect; people will respect that because you do it as unto the Lord. And you have a reason for it, you don’t care about customs, you care about how you stand before the Lord.

Now that’s the concept we’re trying to get across here from Solomon. Solomon has pragmatized morals in this book. When Solomon gets through with morality what is he living his life before? No, Solomon is living his life with his humanity, just before men, before society, that’s all. He shot the whole heart out of morality.

Verse 12, “For man knows not his time: like the fish that are taken in an evil net, and like the birds that are caught in a snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them.” Here he says that man in the end is helpless because all of this life, you can’t end it, you can’t start it, there’s nothing you can do, that’s out of your control. Solomon is realistic and in this situation Solomon says that the best thing to do is verses 7-10; verses 7-10 is the most logical philosophy of life for the unbeliever.

Now, how do you react to it; there are basically three possible reactions to Solomon. The first reaction, if you believe in the divine viewpoint framework is to start immediately, if not sooner, to build up the divine viewpoint framework in the mentality of your soul, which means God at the center, Bible doctrine around it, in other words, you begin to fill the mentality of your soul with Bible doctrine, you can’t get enough Bible doctrine. We have around this all the areas of life, science, history, philosophy, art, music, literature, then we have fellowship with loved ones, friends, society, jobs, sex, possessions, and health. These are the details of life. Now if you really believe in the divine viewpoint framework what should you be doing? I’ll tell you what you should be doing; you should be taking every area of your life, whether it’s in the area of possessions and your attitude toward possessions and what you own, or how you spend your money, you should begin to say listen, before the Lord, what are the rules of Scripture? What is God’s will with regard to personal possessions. So therefore you don’t spend your money the way other people spend their money, just because other people spend their money that way. You spend your money the way you do because of the Lord, and because you know the way He wants you to spend your money. Do you see? There’s a liberation factor here in your life that makes it free, free before the Lord. You’re not encumbered with doing things because other people like to do it; you do it because this is God’s will for you and you know it because of Bible doctrine. There’s nothing slavery about it; it’s a totally free life. You have freely chosen to do this and it’s not slavery.

You take history, if you’re a history student, all right, history is dull, one of the worst subjects ever invented. Why is it? Because apart from the divine viewpoint framework there’s no structure to history, there’s nothing, just a bunch of dates you have to memorize and spit it back on the exam, pass the course, and go along and hope you never see that name again. So that’s history. But look, if you believe in the divine viewpoint framework what are you going to do? You’re going to start saying now listen, I ought to know about dispensations, I ought to know about the divine viewpoint framework, I ought to know about Israel’s role in world history, I ought to know about Bible prophecy and how it bears on the European common market and how it bears on the movement toward world government in our generation. I ought to have all these frameworks [can’t understand words] in the Word of God. You ought to be actively doing this, if you believe in the divine viewpoint framework, otherwise we can say, along with the hippie, along with the skeptic, you’re just living on the basis of society. Otherwise you’re just coasting on the basis of the fact that everybody else does it this way so I do it this way.

Is that the rule of your life, or do you do things the way you do because you actively see the connection; you’ve gone from point A, here’s God, Bible doctrine, down to that point and back again. You are able to cycle this way. Later on, when you get to be a mature Christian you’ll be able to cycle around the circle, reasoning from one subject to the next, not having all pieces of pie, it’s all one set. That’s one reaction you can have towards Solomon.

The other reaction is to be comfortable and just say well, I’m going to go on living because I’m going to go on living.

And then the third way of reacting is to react the way the moderns do, despair, the heck with it, we’ll chuck it, drop out.

Those are the only three logical reactions you can have to this book. And as we go over this book again and again please remember we are looking at life from the human viewpoint; but there is available in the Word of God for you something exciting, and there’s not an activity in your life that doesn’t come under the control of the Word of God; not one. God has thousands of promises; many of you have business frustrations, many of you have frustrations in the home, many of you have frustrations with your children, many of your children have frustrations in school, many of the college students have problems, and yet in every area of these difficulties God’s Word comes through, God’s Word has an answer, God’s Word has promises that you can apply by faith. There’s nothing, you do not have to live your life like Solomon did, but I would suggest that if you’re not serious, if you’re not serious about the Word of God, then what ought to do, my suggestion is to live out Solomon; just live it out, look at verses 7-10 and let that be the motto of your life. If you’re not interested in the Word of God then live consistently with Solomon.

With our heads bowed.