You Can't Undo What God Has Done
Tom Shrader works through Ecclesiastes 6 and 7, showing that material prosperity without God's gift of enjoyment is empty, and that adversity—though we would never choose it—serves deeply transforming purposes in the life of a believer. Drawing on Solomon's repeated refrain that life 'under the sun' apart from God is vanity, Shrader argues that God sovereignly ordains both good and hard seasons, and that the proper response to each is gratitude rooted in the fear of God. The teaching closes with a call to find identity in Christ rather than in achievement, possessions, or circumstances, so that both blessing and suffering can be received as gifts from a good and sovereign Father.
“In the day of prosperity be happy, in the day of adversity consider that God has made one as well as the other.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Ecclesiastes
Recorded: 2008 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 58 min
Themes: contentment, suffering, adversity, gratitude, prosperity, vanity, fear of god, identity in christ, struggling with loss, feeling empty despite success, going through hard times, new believer, seeking purpose, dealing with wealth, young adult, questioning god's goodness
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 6:1-9, Ecclesiastes 6:10-12, Ecclesiastes 7:1-14, Ecclesiastes 7:15-18, Ecclesiastes 7:20, Ecclesiastes 7:23-25, Ecclesiastes 8:1, Ecclesiastes 5:2, Ecclesiastes 5:10-15, Ecclesiastes 2:25, Daniel 3:17-18, 1 Kings 2:1-2, 1 Corinthians 1:25, Romans 3:10, Romans 3:23, 1 Thessalonians 5:18, 2 Timothy 3:16, 1 John 5:17, Isaiah 55
Theological Themes: sovereignty of god, divine providence, sanctification, becoming holy, theodicy, biblical wisdom, union with christ, the fear of the lord
Full Transcript
Introduction to Ecclesiastes
Open your Bibles to the book of Ecclesiastes. We are looking this morning at chapters 6 and 7. Remember from the first week and the introduction: this is a flying over. We are grabbing some nuggets out of this book. You will have a pretty good understanding of what is going on in Ecclesiastes by the time we are done in our six weeks. Needless to say, it is different than studying, for example, the book of Ephesians, where you go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, really breaking apart the Word. The material here does not lend itself to that, but by the same token, we are grabbing these huge principles out of this book.
The Key Themes: Under the Sun and Vanity
The operative phrase — and you have to remember this — is "under the sun." When Solomon talks about life under the sun, he means life apart from a relationship with God. If I just look at life without God in my life, without His understanding or that wisdom, life is not what it appears to be. The key word in the book is "vanity." It means empty. Put those together, and Solomon is saying to us: no matter how much you have, no matter what goals you achieve, no matter what all those things are, apart from God, life is empty. It is like a vapor. It just blows away.
My friend Larry Wright used to describe it this way. He talked about the first time he ever saw cotton candy as a kid. He grabs it, and it is just air. Then you put it in your mouth, and it is there for a few seconds, and it just melts away. It looked like it was going to be so substantive, and yet there is nothing there.
Prosperity Without the Power to Enjoy It
Ray Stedman's introduction to chapters 6 and 7 of Ecclesiastes, written more than 25 years ago, reads as follows: "Anyone who listens to newscasts these days knows that the economic news is pretty bad. We're facing a tremendous recession in the United States. In some places it's described as a return to the Great Depression. Someone has said a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, while a depression is when you lose yours. Yet our view of lives may be so distorted that if hard times actually do come to us, they may be the best years of our lives."
Stedman continues: "That's what Solomon tells us this morning in this passage that we're looking at here in Ecclesiastes chapter 6, where he declares that things are not as they seem to be. We think life is one way; it turns out to be something quite different. The thesis of our passage this morning is that we may be reading everything that happens to us entirely wrong. In chapter 6, the Searcher of Israel, Solomon, says that prosperity may not always be good, and in the first 14 verses of chapter 7, he takes up the opposite and accompanying truth that adversity may not always be bad."
Stedman concludes: "What we need, of course, is a true view of good and evil — how to tell good when it is good, and how to recognize evil for what it is. We would save ourselves much heartache if we could do that. The wonderful thing about Scripture is that it does just that. The Searcher here gives us a true view of good and of evil."
That is really what we are looking at this morning, and in a sense it is a continuation of what we have seen in the first three weeks. Even those things that we would label as good don't really always turn out to be that way. And those things that we would look at and say that's bad almost always turn out to be good. Solomon says we had better be looking at life from a different perspective.
Solomon's Observation: The Evil of Unfulfilled Enjoyment
The first thing Solomon attacks is the idea of prosperity, wealth, and success — terms we might use interchangeably in this instance. Chapter 6, verse 1: "There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, that is prevalent among men." Again, this is the view under the sun, apart from God. Verse 2: "A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor, so that his soul lacks nothing of all that he desires, that God has not empowered him to eat from them, or a foreigner enjoys them — and this is vanity and severe affliction."
Solomon says, here is what I have seen. He is one of the poster children for this, by the way — there has never been anyone like him in terms of success, wealth, or anything of that kind. Solomon says he has seen it in his own life and as a general rule: there is something evil in God blessing people with things but not giving them the blessing to enjoy those things. We miss that distinction.
We would sit down and say, "God, thank you for this stuff," and that is really the first part of the blessing — the blessing of the stuff itself. But there is an adjoining blessing that not everyone who receives the stuff actually receives, and that is the ability to enjoy it. That is what Solomon is saying. There are a great many people who have a great many things — some of it they dreamed about, some of it they earned, some of it was simply dropped on them. It doesn't matter how they got it. They have it. But there is no joy in their life. They don't enjoy it at all.
Two Men at a Red Light
I pulled up at a red light one day, and there was a kid next to me in an old beater car. He had a set of drumsticks, and he was on the steering wheel, on the dashboard — drumming all over the place, happy, not a care in the world. His muffler was banging on the concrete and he didn't care. Then a man pulled up next to me in a big Mercedes, and I looked over and he just looked so unhappy. That was the day it came to me that you never see a bumper sticker on a Mercedes, and you rarely see happy people in them. Now if you are driving a Mercedes, I am sure you are the exception — but they are not very happy people, by and large.
I would see that same thing when I went to Vegas. You would watch people sit for hours at the slot machines. Even if they won something, they would gather their coins or their bills and just keep going. You couldn't really tell if they were winning or losing. There just wasn't much joy in it.
The Lottery Winner Who Rued the Day
If you are a television producer, or you have access to someone in television, I have a great idea for a show: *Extreme Home Makeover — Three Years Later*. I love watching those moments where the family comes off the bus and it's, "Oh my golly, I never thought I'd ever see anything like this!" And I'm not minimizing that. But I would love to come back three years later and see how that incredible yard and pond and everything else is holding up.
A TV show the other night was following people who had won the lottery. The part I saw featured a woman saying, "I rue the day I ever bought that ticket." She had won something like 21 or 29 million dollars. "I wish I would have never bought that ticket. I am just miserable. It hasn't brought me one second of peace or happiness." Now, I found myself thinking, "I'll bet it would for me. I'll bet I could handle that." But here is what she was saying: she got the first part of the blessing. God said, all right —
The Gift of Enjoyment
Whoever loves money will never be satisfied with money, nor is the love of abundance satisfied with its income — it is vanity. When good things increase, so too do those who consume them. Solomon says in verse 12 that the sleep of the working man is pleasant, whether he has a little or a lot, but the full stomach of the rich man does not allow him any sleep.
In verse 14, Solomon says he has seen something really sad: a man who had a bad investment and lost everything. In the end, it did not matter whether he won or lost, because as he came naked from his mother's womb, so he will return. He will take nothing from the fruit of his labor that he can carry in his hand.
So how in the world can anyone find joy, happiness, or enjoyment in the things they have been given? Solomon goes back to chapter 2 to ask the question and give the answer — the answer is in the question. Verse 25: "For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?" Without God, there is no enjoyment. To a person who is good in His sight, He has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, while to the sinner He has given the task of gathering and collecting so that he can give to the one who is good in God's sight. This too is vanity.
Faith, Relationship, and an Eternal Perspective
The only way to find wisdom and knowledge and joy is to be in Him — in our New Testament context, to be in Christ. He is the one who pleases God, and we please God through faith. When we talk about faith, we need to be clear about what we mean: it is that faith which brings us into right relationship with God. We are saved by grace through faith, and God brings us into that relationship.
But that is not the end of faith. Now we walk by faith, we live by faith. It is not just that one moment of belief — it is believing in Him, following Him, and taking Him at His word. Faith leads to obedience, and we begin to live in a way and have an understanding that is contrary to the world system.
We are told not to love the things of the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life. John tells us in 1 John 5:17 that these things are all passing away. When we go to Isaiah 55, to 1 John 5, and to these passages, we are brought back again and again to this truth: when you and I look at the world apart from God, it is a facade. It is very deceiving. It is not as it appears.
A Hundred Children and Two Thousand Years
Solomon says in chapter 6, verse 3, that if a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they may be, but his soul is not satisfied with good and he does not even have a proper burial, then he will say it is better for him than a miscarriage. Verse 6 takes it even further: if another man lives 2,000 years and does not enjoy good things, do not all go to the one place?
Solomon is using a little hyperbole here. You can be a man who lives 2,000 years. You can be a man who has a hundred children — you send out your Christmas card with a hundred kids, 400 grandkids, and 75 great-grandkids. You have all these things around you, all of these things we might call blessings. But if God has not given you the ability to enjoy Him, you will say at the end of it all that you would have been better off never having been born.
David uses the same thought in 1 Kings chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, when he understands he is about to die and tells Solomon: "I am about to go the way of all men." We are all going to die. Without the ability to enjoy the life God has given, it would be better never to have been born.
Verse 7 says all a man's labor is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. He is working and working and working and cannot find any joy in it. He is designed to find some measure of satisfaction in life, but he cannot. Solomon asks what advantage the wise man has over the fool, and what advantage the poor have in knowing how to walk before God. What the eyes see is better than what the soul desires — and this too is futile and striving after the wind.
You Cannot Dispute with God
If you take all of those first nine verses together, Solomon is making the same point again and again. You can have all of these things, but if you do not understand God and who He is — if you do not have some sort of eternal, divine perspective, if you do not see things as God sees them — then all the blessings in the world do not mean anything. They will not make you happy or joyful. They are not permanent. They may be transferable, but as Solomon said, you do not even know who you transferred them to.
Verse 10 says: "What exists has already been named, for it is known what man is, for he cannot dispute with Him who is stronger than he is. For there are many words which increase futility. What then is the advantage to man? For who knows what is good for a man during his life, during the few years of his futile life? He will spend them like a shadow, for who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun?"
Everything that has existed has already been named. Solomon is speaking of the declaration of God's sovereignty — God's decrees. God created, God declared, and man cannot change it. Even if a man accumulates everything, he will not find satisfaction in those things, and he cannot undo what God has done. That is the second part of verse 10: he cannot dispute with Him. Verse 11 says that words are vanity. You can argue and argue and argue, and it is not going to change anything. As C.S. Lewis offers this insight: to argue with God is to argue —
You Can't Undo What God Has Done
There is a sense in which we understand that God is sovereign. We come back to this point again and again. God is sovereign — that is what makes Him God. We cannot lose grasp of that truth.
Who Knows What Is Good?
Solomon asks the question in verse 12: "Who knows what is good for man?" In other words, who knows the real value of this? Who can speak to the future? Nobody understands this. Who knows what is real for a man? Who knows where man is headed? God does. You do not.
We say hindsight is 20/20 — probably it is not, but we say at least we can look back and figure it out. God says His foresight is 20/20. Everything is 20/20 to Him. Paul writes to the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 1:25: "The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."
There is a show on television that I watched once, for about a quarter of it, and it was driving me nuts. It asked the question: are you smarter than a fifth grader? After about twenty minutes it became clear I was not, and that was very frustrating to me. Solomon is asking: who is smart at all? Are you smarter than Einstein? Because even if you are, it does not matter, because Einstein's wisdom is foolishness to God. God sees perfectly what is good.
The Buffet We Would Never Choose
We look at life and say, "God, it sure makes sense to me that you would give me this, and this, and this." If life were like a buffet and I am just going through a cafeteria line pulling things off, I am not pulling off anything labeled bad. I am not even interested in it. That would be like broccoli and green beans to me. If I want something green, I will eat chocolate mint ice cream. I am not looking for broccoli, green beans, and peas.
Here is what God is saying. Here is the problem. You passed over what you thought was bad, and in reality it was really good, and you needed it. Your life is incomplete without those things we would label bad — trials, adversity, difficulties.
What Trials Do to Us
I want to read a paragraph from a commentary called *A Life Well Lived* by Tommy Nelson. He writes about adversity that comes into our lives, and offers these observations about trials.
Trials always have a beneficial purpose. When trials come in, we ask what good can come of it. What Nelson is saying — and what the Bible says — is that good always comes from them. If we were working our way around a room and asked everyone to talk about a time they experienced real difficulty and challenge, and then asked whether they grew through it, almost always the answer would be yes.
Trials purify you. Just as gold ore placed in fire has its impurities burned away, that is what trials do. That is what Peter calls them. Do not be surprised by these fiery ordeals. God puts you in the fire, pulls you out, puts you back in, and pulls you out again, until He has purified you. Trials also show what you are. As Nelson writes, whatever comes out of you when you are hit shows who you really are.
Golf, Character, and What Is Really Inside You
I have heard it said that golf is a great character builder. No, it is not. Golf is a great character revealer. I was reading a story the other day — Arnold Palmer was writing about some thoughts on golf and about controlling yourself on the course. He was playing in a tournament, somewhere around holes fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen, and he missed a putt, knocked the ball in, and lofted his putter over the crowd that had gathered. His father simply pulled him aside and said, "If you ever do that again, you will never play another round of golf."
His point, as he goes on to explain, is that we all have those emotions when adversity hits — big or little, whatever it might be — and we have some response to it. But there has to be a control, and the trial simply reveals what is really inside you. How many times have you come out of something — some small, silly little thing, some hassle — and thought, "I did not think I was capable of that"?
This morning at 4:40, a policeman pulled me over on my way in here. The lights were flashing, and almost instinctively I wanted to react. So I stopped and thought, "What does he want me to do?" I thought about getting out, but then I remembered watching someone on television say never get out of the car. So I put it in park and put my hands up so he could see I was not armed. He came up and said, "Your headlights are out." I said, "I know." He said, "Your taillights are out too." I said, "I do not think so." He said, "That is why we are here — your taillights are out." I told him to check and see if they would come on now, and as it turned out the light on my dash had also gone off and I had not known it. He said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "It is a Volkswagen — you have to take it in to get the headlight fixed," and I had just been waiting until it was time.
The Refining Purpose of Trials
Trials bring you to the end of your physical and intellectual rope. Haven't you been there? You cry out, "God, I don't think I can take anymore. I don't know if I can handle anymore." I called Susan the other day and said, "How are you doing?" You could just tell from her voice. She said, "I just have to get through till Sunday, then I'll start to feel better." She was at the end of her chemo regiment. But that's exactly where you find yourself in a trial — you just don't know if you can take any more.
Trials make you go to the Word. You want God to talk to you, and here is how He is going to do it — through His Word. Trials make you pray. You go to the doctor's office and he says, "We got the report back, everything's fine." You walk out talking about where to eat. But if he says, "There's a problem on this MRI," it's a different conversation on the way to the car. Nobody's talking about eating.
Trials make you trust. Why would God bring these things into your life? For all these reasons — to make you trust Him. He says He is never going to leave you or forsake you, and you don't really know that until He puts you in the fire. Trials make everything you heard on Sunday become real. We've said it before: Sunday is the classroom, but life is the laboratory. It's wonderful to know He is sovereign, wonderful to hear these truths and go through them again and again — but they aren't real until you go in there. There's a difference between scrimmaging in practice and the gun going off on game day.
Trials make you go to Christ. Trials prove you. And listen to this — trials humanize you. Trials make you sweeter and more sensitive. Somebody stopped me the other day, so filled with self-righteousness I could barely stand it — young and cocky, dripping with it, probably exactly like I was at that age. I thought, "God is not going to let you live this way." And the only way I ever came to feel genuine empathy is that I had to be broken too.
Nelson cites two movies on this point. One is called *The Doctor*, with William Hurt, and the other is called *Regarding Henry*. In *The Doctor*, William Hurt plays a hardcore physician whose world is turned upside down when he is diagnosed with cancer. In *Regarding Henry*, a hard-charging lawyer who eats people up and spits them out goes to get a pack of cigarettes, gets shot in the head, and comes back a sensitive, caring person. That is what trials do — they literally transform us.
Why God Brings Trials
Here is what Solomon is saying: you would never pick trials off the shelf and put them in your life. And by not putting them in your life yourself, you miss all these things. So God says, "I am going to bring them into your life — not because I want to punish you, not because I don't like you, but because I love you."
God's Sovereignty and Our Words
If you flip back one page to chapter 5, verse 2, it reads: "Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth; therefore let your words be few." He goes back to God's sovereignty again. He is God.
Something happened to me a couple of weeks ago where a man was angry at God — God wasn't doing something, wasn't closing the deal on something. He was going to tell God about it when he got to heaven. But when you get to heaven, if you get there, you are simply going to shut up and praise Him and worship Him. All of a sudden you are going to see things as they really are. That is what Solomon is saying throughout this entire section.
Moving into Chapter 7
When you get to chapter 7, even as you look at it in your Bible, you will notice it is written differently. The paragraphs are different. It is more like poetry. In fact, these really are proverbs — Solomon is simply making statements, one after another. The very first verse begins, "A good name is…"
A Good Name and the Reality of Death
A good reputation is better than fine ointment, and the day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth. It is better to have a good name — something that truly performs — than a mere appearance, an illusion, a pleasant smell that does not deliver. You see those soap and body wash advertisements for men where the women are lining up, and you think: would they be lining up if he smelled like a garbage can? Solomon says it is better to have a good reputation, and that is why you ought to be so concerned about your name.
Mourning, Laughter, and Facing the Inevitable
In verse two, Solomon contrasts joy and laughter with mourning and feasting. "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, because that is the end of every man, and the living take it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for when a face is sad a heart may be happy. The mind of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the mind of the fool is in the house of pleasure."
Now, just to be clear — we got together last night and for an hour and fifteen minutes we laughed and had fun, and some of us gathered in the Commons and just hung out. Solomon is not saying there is no place for that. But he is saying you cannot fill your life with laughter alone.
I find this illustrated in weddings and funerals. I have learned to enjoy doing weddings, but honestly, they are not my favorite. I enjoy the funerals much more, and it is because of what Solomon is describing here — there is a soberness to it. The last funeral I did was in this chapel, and it was a great service, a time of celebration. But when I got up to share, even though I knew hardly anyone in the room, it was so quiet and the people were so attentive. The reason was that they were all old. They knew they were just a little bit behind this man — another week, month, or year, and they would be right there with him. They were confronting that reality.
I was in downtown Phoenix the other day on one of the side streets, and I saw a fortune-teller's house. I find it remarkable that someone would walk in there and hand over hard cash to have a person tell them what is going to happen in the future — horoscopes and all of that. Do you believe that every Sagittarian in the world is going to have the same day? We have this almost insatiable curiosity to know the future. Solomon says he will tell you the future: you are going to die. That is your future. Have a nice day. That is really what he is saying.
All those other little side turns along the way are distractions — and unfortunately, that is exactly what they are. They get our eyes off that inevitability. The sooner we come to grips with that reality, the richer life is going to be. We are going to hang on to stuff. We are going to live under the illusion that we are in the land of the living going to the land of the dead, when in fact we are in the land of the dead going to the land of the living. We are here treating this like it is home, treating this like it is permanent, clinging to it as though this is the ultimate reality. Solomon says this is reality, but it is temporary. It is fleeting. You will never be satisfied with it. It will never make you truly happy.
The Value of Truth Over Empty Laughter
Verse five: "It is better to listen to the rebuke of a wise man than to listen to the song of a fool. For as the crackling of thorn bushes under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool." When you take those dry thorn bushes and throw them in a fire, they are gone — they burn fast. That is what the laughter of a fool amounts to. It is futile.
You are far better off having someone tell you the truth in love. That is what the Bible is. As 2 Timothy 3:16 says, it is good for doctrine, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. When you hold it up, it is a mirror — it reveals who you really are. To have someone in your life who loves you and cares for you, who will tell you the truth and do it in love but never shrink from saying the hard things — that is a wonderful gift. Solomon says that is far better than sitting around going from joke to joke to joke, from thing to thing to thing.
Finishing Strongly
Verse eight: "The end of the matter is better than the beginning. Patience is better than the spirit of haughtiness. Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of fools. Do not say, 'Why is it that the former days were better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask these things."
The end is more important than the beginning. It is exciting to start big and start well, but the challenge is to finish strongly. If you are fifty or older, it is time to be thinking about this. It does not matter what God has done in your life, how He has used you, what He has produced through you, or whatever your sense of accomplishment may be — none of that matters if you do not finish strongly. If you do not break the tape. If you do not keep going. That is what Solomon is saying. What happens at the end matters far more.
Finishing Well
It matters how you begin, but it matters how you finish. I've been invited to speak in February at a retired senior citizens conference, and I'm not sure how this is going to go. But we're going to talk about breaking the tape — even if you're just falling into it as you pass out. That's what we're going to talk about: how do you finish? God just keeps using us.
Don't Live in the Good Old Days
Verse 10 says don't be talking about the good old days. There's nothing wrong with memories. For our anniversary, the girls got a bunch of pictures and put them together, and I'm a sucker for that. I love to look at those videos.
We've been married thirty years, and we never had any pictures of our wedding. I had a friend take them, and we had no money, and he forgot to tell me he didn't know what he was doing. So we have one picture — one picture of my face and the back of Susan's head. When people say bring a wedding picture and then a picture now, I always say that could be anybody, and yeah, that's the back of her head.
Well, we were watching this video and all of a sudden I said, "Hey, that was cool," and then there were like eight pictures of our wedding — lost for thirty years. Somehow my mom had taken these pictures at the wedding and just thrown them in a drawer, developed them and never said a word. I love that. So I'm not talking about looking back and going, "Wow" — I'm telling you, Susan looked incredible, but I really looked good too. Time has not been good to me.
Here's what Ecclesiastes says about the good old days. Aren't you sick of that phrase? There's nothing worse. I met up with a guy I used to work with, and we were about eighteen or twenty minutes into the conversation and all we had talked about was 1978. When he left, I realized we had nothing in common. And honestly, they weren't those good of days.
Consider the Work of God
Someone looks back at all of this and then says, here in verse 13: "Consider the work of God, for who is able to straighten what He has bent?" God has declared this — you can't fix it or change it.
Verse 14 is one you need to circle, underline, and mark. It's another one of those key verses in this book: "In the day of prosperity be happy, in the day of adversity consider that God has made one as well as the other." When everything is going well, we want to say, "Thank You, God, that's terrific, You're a good God." But then along comes something we don't like — adversity, trials, difficulty — and we fail to praise Him and thank Him for that. First Thessalonians 5:18 says, "In all things give thanks to God."
Even If He Doesn't
I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago where I taught four or five sessions. One night they showed a missions video from Indonesia. I did not realize that Indonesia is the fourth most populated country in the world. They were showing a woman who was in prison there for sharing the gospel, and they started talking about Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
I got up and set my notes aside for a moment and said, whenever I think of Daniel and the boys in the fire, I always think of the challenge Nebuchadnezzar gives them: bow down or I'm going to send you into the fire. And they answer him: "If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire, and He will deliver us out of your hand" — Daniel 3:18 — "but even if He doesn't." That's my favorite part of that whole passage. "Even if He doesn't, let it be known to you, O king, we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up." I don't know what happened to me — I just started talking and never got to my notes, and did forty-five minutes on that one idea: even if He doesn't.
The Lie of the Prosperity Gospel
We somehow think — and this is what all that prosperity teaching is about — that God wants you to prosper and God wants you to be healthy. That's just not true, and it has brought more misery on people than almost anything else. On more than one occasion I've been going into a hospital room following one of those teachers after their visit. They've just told this poor sick person, "The reason you're sick is because you don't have enough faith." And the person is saying to me, "Is that it?" How in the world would you say that? You are in this bed because God either put you here or allowed you to be here for His glory.
God brings trials, adversity, hardship, and difficulty into your life. Can it be any more plain than this? "In the day of prosperity be happy, in the day of adversity consider that He made one as well as the other." This other teaching is a lie — I personally think it is absolutely a lie from hell itself. It discourages people. It builds up a sense of self-righteousness in people who have material things, a sense of entitlement, and a false barometer of what real spirituality looks like. Just because you have a lot of stuff does not mean you are walking with God — any more than suffering means you are not.
The Problem of Suffering and Unequal Outcomes
Are you telling me that those people suffering for the cause of Christ in Indonesia, sitting in prison and enduring hardship, are in that condition because somehow there is sin in their life? I just don't buy that. Does that make the slightest bit of sense to you? The Apostle Paul says he had this thorn in the flesh, asked three times for God to remove it, and God left it there. Why does He leave it there? So Paul won't be this arrogant, cocky man in everybody's face — that is at least one thing that comes to mind. It keeps him humble, focused, soft, and pliable. All of those things come into play.
Verses 15 through the first verse of chapter 8 are really a continuation of that thought. Solomon says in verse 15, "I've seen everything during my lifetime — futile." He says this is not good, and here is what he has seen: righteous men dying young while the wicked enjoy long lives. He looks around and asks whether any of this makes sense. Here are great men and women of God dying in their teens and twenties, while the man living next door is a jerk who is a hundred and ten and just ran a 10K. That makes no sense.
Haven't you seen that in your own life? These incredible young men and young women of God, just struck down. You cry out, "God, why would You do that? Why would You take this mother with three young babies — a wonderful woman of God with this incredible mission field before her?" And then you look at some of the people around you and wonder why God lets them live. The answer is: because He is God and you are not. That is His plan. I don't understand it, but I don't rebel against it either, because I know it is His plan.
The Difficult Middle Sections of Ecclesiastes
We said in the first week that the book of Ecclesiastes is used often by atheists and by those who question our faith, and it contains large sections that are really tough to understand. Here is one of them, right in verses 16 through 18. "Do not be excessively righteous and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself? Do not be excessively wicked. Do not be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good for you to grasp one thing and also not let go of the other, for the one who fears God comes forth with both of them."
I'm not sure exactly what Solomon is saying here, but I know what he is not saying. He is not saying to be a little bit righteous and a little bit evil. Moderation is good when it comes to cookies. Moderation is not good when it comes to morals, values, and ethics. Some believe that the little phrase in verse 16 — "why should you ruin yourself?" — indicates that what he is talking about there is a kind of self-righteousness, that idea of the Pharisees.
Regardless, here is what he is saying: if I want righteousness and if I want wisdom, I find them in verse 18 in the fear of God — in that awesome understanding of who He is. The fear of God is the opposite of living under the sun. It is the beginning of wisdom. It is knowing how to live in the midst of a fallen world without becoming self-righteous, smug, complacent, and arrogant.
The Universal Indictment of Mankind
Then Solomon gives us this incredible assessment of man in verse 20: "Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins." Paul says it this way: "No one does good, no, not one." In Romans chapter 3, verse 10, Paul quotes from the Old Testament: "There is none righteous, no, not one." Ultimately, Paul issues a blanket indictment of all mankind. Romans 3:23: "All have sinned" — every one of us — "and fall short of the glory of God."
Solomon says: get control of yourself and understand that you are a sinner. Have you ever had anyone say to you, "You don't understand me, you don't really know me, you've never taken the time to get to know me"? The implication is that you know yourself. But what Solomon is saying is that you don't even know yourself. You don't even know how wicked you really are. You have the illusion that some good dwells in you, and apart from Christ, there is no good dwelling in you whatsoever.
The Limits of Human Wisdom
Look at verses 23 through the end of that section and then chapter 8, verse 1. Solomon says: "I have tested all this with wisdom. I said, 'I will be wise,' but it was far from me. What has been is remote and exceedingly mysterious. Who can discover it? I directed my mind to know and to investigate and to seek wisdom and an explanation, and to know the evil and the folly and the foolishness and the madness." Then dropping down to chapter 8, verse 1: "Who is like the wise man and who knows the interpretation of a matter? A man's wisdom illumines him and causes his stern face to beam."
Let me read those verses again from a paraphrase. "I've tested everything in search of wisdom. I set out to be wise but it was beyond me — far beyond me, deep, and oh so deep. Does anyone ever find it? I concentrated with all my might, studying and exploring and seeking wisdom and the meaning of life. I also wanted to identify evil and stupidity, foolishness and craziness." And chapter 8, verse 1: "There is nothing better than being wise, knowing how to interpret the meaning of life. Wisdom puts light in the eyes and gives gentleness to the words and the manner."
Here is what Solomon is saying: I looked everywhere. I tried this pursuit of wisdom and discovered that I — the wisest of all — still cannot understand on my own what these things really mean. I have searched it, and it is beyond me. I don't really ever get it, and I never will. And you never will either.
Yet he does offer some hope in verse 1 of chapter 8 when he asks, "Who is like the wise man?" There is something uniquely significant about that. "Who knows the interpretation of the matter?" If we can get there — and there is something there worth reaching for.
When Wisdom Reaches Its Limit
Who can really figure these things out? Who has the knowledge to unpack the mysteries before us? A wise man — who can make a stern man's face beam? There is joy found in the midst of that hardness, and it begins to melt away. A softness, an understanding, a countenance that begins to change.
Here is what Solomon says. I hope you get the sense that when I said to Susan, "How was it?" and she told me it was really discouraging, really depressing — you have to finish the sentence. That was his whole intention: to generate in you and me this sense that this is really heavy, that I don't think I can do this. And his whole point is that you can't.
If you are here this morning, did not take communion, and would say Jesus is not your Lord and not your Savior — if you are looking for some relief but have no interest in Christ — then what Solomon says, what the Bible teaches, is that you will forever be in that state. You may have moments of momentary, sporadic relief, but they are just that: temporary and sporadic. You will never truly understand life. You will try to figure it out on your own, conclude it is not fair, and your life will be futile and filled with frustration. The best you can do is think about the good old days, how it used to be, and wish it were like that again.
Satisfaction Is a Gift From God
Solomon says it is good for us to work and find satisfaction. It is good to toil and experience some of the rewards and fruit of our labor. But what he is saying is that under the sun, you will never get there on your own.
What he is saying to us is that God gives to His people not just the blessing of things in life — food, shelter, and clothing — but also the ability and the pleasure to enjoy them. Even as Christians, we fall into the trap of saying, "I really need this, I really want this, this stuff really matters." He is not saying we should not be ambitious or that we should not strive to achieve a level of success as we use the gifts and talents God has given us. But that striving is to be for His glory, and it is not ultimately where we find our identity.
Identity Built on Shifting Ground
Who are you? "Oh, I'm a lawyer." What happens when you can't practice law anymore? "I'm a beauty queen." What happens when time takes its toll and that identity no longer holds? "I'm a baseball player."
I watched a show the other night about unbreakable baseball records. To break Ricky Henderson's stolen base record, you would have to steal 56 bases a year for a quarter of a century. That is not happening anytime soon. They were also interviewing Terry Francona because one of the unbreakable records involved five straight World Series championships. When asked about repeating, he said something striking: when you lose, you break it apart and work through it, but when you win, the excitement lasts only a matter of minutes before you start thinking about how to do it again next year.
Think about that. You have won the World Series. You are at the absolute top of the game — nothing higher. And yet within minutes, the satisfaction is already gone and the striving begins again. There is nothing wrong with pursuing consecutive championships, but if your identity is in that achievement, what are you left with every time you fall short?
Dennis Miller once said Tiger Woods is the only man in the world who can make Michael Jordan wish he were somebody else. But right now, Tiger cannot even walk to the first tee. If your identity is entirely in being a golfer, that is serious hurt. He may come back and break all kinds of records, but in that moment, what does he have?
Identity in Christ Changes Everything
My identity is in Christ, and that makes everything else in life — good or bad — something I am able to enjoy or endure. It gives me the ability to receive even sorrow rightly. The relief from pain is not found in pretending it is not there or in fighting against it. It is found in asking God what He is going to do in your life.
It is saying, "God, thank you for the cancer. Thank you for gas at four and a quarter. Thank you that I lost the job." In everything, give thanks — because He is going to work it out. At the end of the day, you are going to see Him work in a way you never dreamed, and you are going to be stronger than you ever thought you could be. He is going to do it all. And at the end, when you have exhausted yourself and fallen short, He gets all the glory. It is a win-win.
Closing
I have good news for you: there are only two more weeks of this. Next week we continue, and in that final week the solution is really brought into focus — though we already have it, don't we? Fear God and keep His commandments.
Would you pray with me? Father, thank You for these wonderful truths. We fight against them, and yet the longer I live and the more I see You work this way in my life and in others, I simply know it is true. For those here this morning who are on the dark side of this, would You remind them of how You have already worked in their lives? You have already brought them through so much. God, take them back to the study of that Twenty-Third Psalm — that You, the Lord, are our Shepherd, and we shall not want.
Opening Prayer
Lord, give us rest. Walk us through the valley of the shadow of death. God, whether it is prosperity or adversity, we understand You made them both. God, we pray that we will come into Your presence quietly and reflectively. We will listen, for You are in heaven and we are on earth. God, let our words be measured and few. We pray to You this morning in Christ's name. Have a great week — we will see you next week.