We're picking up in chapter six, the final argument from Solomon about the
reality that all is vanity.
And for the last five chapters, he's helped us to see the futility of
chasing things that don't last.
The soap bubbles of life that are at one moment so enticing and yet all at once
fleeting.
At the close of chapter five, last time, we were taught about gratitude and about
treasuring the creator more than creation.
Now in chapter six, we're going to be confronted with very intense statements
that are intended to wound our pride, our self-reliance, and even make us question
our own willingness to press on in this life.
Chapter six may be the most discouraging of the entire book.
As Solomon, and you're probably like, really?
It's been rough already.
Yes.
Solomon takes every point from the previous chapters and he fashions them so
that they exert the greatest amount of discomfort here in chapter six.
In short, chapter six is a summary of his entire argument and it's pointed to the
heart of a person who finds trust in what they have or the life that they've
built, showing the reader that not even the supposed blessings of this life will
result in ultimate satisfaction apart from God.
You can have the best that this life has to offer, but if God doesn't enable you
to enjoy it, then it's pointless.
Some of you may be familiar with the famous quote I'm going to put on the
screen.
"'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
How many of you are familiar with that one?
That is a shocking amount of people that are not familiar with this.
Do you not read?
I don't want to offend you in here, but this was a very common one.
Well, now you know it.
Now you're exposed.
Now that line was made famous by Alfred Lord Tennyson in the mid-1800s and he had
a friend die when they were in their early 20s.
But it's presumed that he took the line from that other quote, a famous play by
William Congreve.
Over 100 years prior, there was a play called The Way of the World and the
character makes a similar statement.
"'Tis better to be left than to have never been loved."
In other words, even losing the love of another person is better than to have
never received it in the first place.
A taste of life is better than no life at all.
Would you agree?
Would you agree with those statements?
Now both presume that suffering loss is likely.
And yet the risk of loss is worth that gain of momentary experience.
But there are detractors to these statements.
They would counter with, you can't miss something that you never had.
True.
Maybe somebody says that the bitterness of loss and grief can outweigh any
positive impact of love.
I find it interesting to think about, especially in light of today's passage.
Solomon is going to provoke us to think about this in his final push to prove
that all is vanity.
Now here again is the outline that we've been working through.
And you can see after today, after today, one more hard one, we'll get to the
third section of the book and really the turning point for the entire work.
But we have to finish Solomon's penultimate argument today.
That all is vanity.
So go ahead, if you have your Bible's turn to Ecclesiastes chapter six.
Today we have to do some heavy Hebrew work.
You probably noticed as Jeff was reading the passage, there are difficult
things in this passage today.
Like many before us, this, this is foreign to us.
We don't think with the ancient Near East mind, nor do we speak in ancient
Hebrew syntax and words.
And part of the reason Ecclesiastes is often misunderstood and avoided is
because it is difficult.
So my endeavor throughout this whole study has been to help make this book
understandable.
Trying to bring those concepts to today and helping us to grasp, grasp the
wisdom that's contained.
But it requires us to do linguistic and cultural study.
We need to understand what God has said so we can know what is in the book.
So we can know how to live.
So in verse one, Ecclesiastes chapter six, Solomon points out another
observation.
He says there is an evil I have seen under the sun.
There is an evil or a tragedy that is prevalent among men.
Now some of your translations, they may phrase it this way, that it lies heavy
on mankind.
But I don't think that's accurate.
Now most other places, that same Hebrew word is used to, to connote great or
vast or numerous.
And that's how we should understand this.
There is an all too common misery that occurs among mankind.
So what is it?
Well verse two then explains this common evil calamity is a person receiving
from God riches and wealth and honor so that he lacks nothing that his soul
desires and yet God does not empower him to eat from it.
Now there's a couple things to note here.
First, notice how Solomon clearly identifies that God is the one who gives
things like riches and honor and yet God also is the one who either enables or
doesn't enable a person to enjoy such things.
Now this focus on God's authority over life shows us yet again this book is not
the ramblings of an old bitter man.
This is a man who has seen so much and he desires to confront the materialistic
desires that plagued him in his youth and to help others to avoid his pitfalls.
Solomon knows that not only does the Lord give and take away but even
enjoyment cannot be had outside of God's sovereign gift.
Now second, the phrasing about eating that you see there, it's another example
of these words and phrases that are common in the day but they're not common
with us today.
Now in verse two when he spoke about lacking before we get to the eating,
the word for desire, the soul desire there,
it could also be rendered as appetite.
The desire is the appetite so his soul is hungry
for things, craving things. Think about how helpful that is
for us to understand. Now in the personal ministry of the word
we seek to help people identify their desires,
their wants so they can understand their inner person
and learn to worship God instead of their desires. Wouldn't it be helpful
to think of your desires not as those things that just make you happy
or content but those things that you hunger and thirst for, the things
that you crave.
So Solomon says this evil is that a man hungers and thirsts for earthly things
and God appears to give those earthly things to him but then a foreigner or
stranger comes to eat the things that were provided. Now there's
a similarity here with first Kings chapter three verses 13 and 14. I'm not
going to put them on the screen but I'm just going to paraphrase for you.
God is speaking to Solomon and to Solomon he says,
I will give you both riches and honor and I'll prolong your days
if, if you walk in my ways and you keep my statutes and my
commandments. But we know Solomon did not.
Now that eating, that eating is more like devouring. It's not just a very nice
fancy meal where you have the courses set out and all of your
silverware. No it's like a ravenous wolf tearing into
something or if some of you know that book or the movie Hook,
right, and the Lost Boys they have the feast on the table.
Now okay none of you knew you know the love quote. How many of you have seen
Hook? More of you have seen Hook than know it's
better to have loved and lost and never to have loved at all. Okay
but you know the scene. They have that feast sitting in front of them and they
just tear into that thing, right? That is what's described here. That
eating. Could you imagine God gives a feast, a beautiful feast,
lays it out in front of you showing the desires of your heart that can
be met, your appetite can be satiated and you sit down at
the table ready to enjoy the feast and then God doesn't allow you to eat
from it. Somebody else comes along, a stranger,
to enjoy that feast not just to eat it but to tear it apart.
That thing that you thought was for yourself.
And so all the man received was a longing of the ice
but never the satisfaction of the soul. Now can you imagine that God may give you
everything you want just within arm's reach
but then you're not allowed to enjoy it. Not that you don't get it but somebody
else comes along to receive what you wanted so badly.
Now we're going to come back to this theme. Solomon calls it a sickening evil,
a plague that can't go away. When you think about it your stomach should turn a
little bit. It should be a sickening evil. Now this
third and final point regarding verse two is about that phrase
because Solomon puts such an extreme emphasis
on it. It's not as clear in English. When you read it in Hebrew the sentence
structure is different, the pacing is different.
Even those of you that have studied you know the way that you read is different.
You read from right to left instead of left to right.
But the words, the ideas expressed within the words, this is where we need to focus.
When verse two closes, Solomon isn't just giving a commentary
about life. He's slowing us down. He's speaking with the pace not of a Ben
Shapiro, you know he talks so fast, but with measured words.
Measured words intended to make a point. He wants us to consider what is being
said. So in Hebrew if you're trying to convey
the idea, it reads more like this. What vanity this is.
An absolute sickening evil.
You can't just pass by it. You have to wrestle with it.
And he said the same thing in chapter five. We covered this verse 13
when he talked about the tragedy of a person whose riches lead to their own
demise. He spoke of this. What was pursued to
bless ultimately brought about a curse. Now Solomon is defining this evil as
not being able to eat or not being able to enjoy
what one has. Now to contrast that, we just read
the other week Titus chapter one verse 12 about those gluttonous cretins.
They should come to mind. They filled themselves with the desires
that they had. They kept nothing from themselves. So you
should ask why would God do that for the cretins
and yet seem to torture others according to verse two.
Hmm. We can look to Romans chapter one to understand. Beginning of verse 24
we see that the passions and the desires that people crave
they're used by God to lead to a person's destruction
unless God rescues a person. But we need to be clear. God is not evil.
When he doesn't empower somebody to enjoy their possessions or when
he gives them over to their own selfish desires
rather when that happens that's evidence of an evil heart
that has desires to find enjoyment in creation
rather than the creator. The Solomon's not done
drawing our attention to the futility of life.
Oh there's Romans for you. God gave them over. God gave them over.
In verse three he begins a series of comparisons and this is the hard part.
He's drawing us back to that theme of soul or
inner desire satisfaction. Now the first case he brings is this. A man who
fathers a hundred children. Now in those days
fathering so many children would be seen as an immense blessing.
Today fathers in here you're thinking how can I afford that?
A hundred children that's a lot of mouths to feed right?
But in the ancient Near East fathering so many children would have been seen as
God's blessing as the almighty bestowing riches and
wealth and honor and long life was seen as an immense
blessing as well. But if a person receives good things
let's say today those things are a nice house
wealth to enjoy the best family vacations a job
that's fulfilling a spouse that loves you children that honor and respect you
a person can receive all these things but if his soul
isn't satisfied and he dies alone forgotten not honored
then according to Solomon it would be better to have never
lived at all. Now we're going to address the thoughts about a miscarriage or a
stillborn child in a moment but don't miss this
thought. Earlier I brought this this quote that only half of you knew
but here it is again think about this at the core of this thinking
is that love is worth the cost of loss yet here Solomon's offering a
different idea he's saying it would be better to never
see anything good than to see it and not be satisfied.
Now remember Solomon is poking that person with a materialistic mind the
person whose mind is set on the flesh the
person who hungers and thirsts not for righteousness
but for selfish desire the person whose best life is now
with all the common grace so Solomon is pointing out to that person that if
your best life is here then it would be better to not
even see the sun than to experience the potential
blessings and ultimately be left unsatisfied in the end.
Now this is the reality for unbelievers but it is also the reality for lukewarm
Christians.
The best life that one can hope for then is here and now
and that's why it's a tragedy a sickening evil vanity.
A person can live their whole life amass wealth and fame and live many years
but in the end they have no rest and they will not be satisfied because they
focused on creation rather than the creator.
Now within this passage Solomon makes the comparison
of a person living unsatisfied versus the miscarried or stillborn child.
Now I want to acknowledge the pain and the heartache that this may bring to
some of our families. For those of us in Christ we know that
ultimately in Christ it is better to love and to suffer loss.
We know that in our need and our longing we run to Christ who meets us in our
desperation who will one day wipe away every tear.
I don't want to upset families due to the nature of the passage but
as Jeff noted these are the holy scriptures
and God has something here for us to learn. All scripture
is profitable and though it may be uncomfortable
and wisdom literature is just uncomfortable.
These things that are said are needed for us. We need to learn we need
to hear. Now let me be clear this passage is not
a doctrinal statement on the eternal state of the unborn.
It's not a doctrinal statement. There is however an encouragement
about the nature of an unborn child and it's that Solomon sees the child as a
person and one to whom there is an advantage
over the person who lives a long life and yet whose soul is not satisfied.
I think it reasonable to say that Solomon's opinion of the miscarried
child is similar to that of his father David.
And many of you know in second Samuel chapter 12 David states his infant child
cannot be brought back to life but that one day he would go to see him
to be reunited with him. But that is not Solomon's point here.
In Ecclesiastes 6 Solomon is focusing our attention
on the ultimate reality of an unfulfilled life.
Now the phrasing of verse 4 is that the miscarried child never saw light.
They came in darkness and they left in darkness.
In other words they never experienced even the dull glimmers
of goodness that this life under the sun offers.
Now the materialistic mind to the person that is so focused
on here and now living that would be the worst life to not even
enjoy one thing.
So his point is not to wound grieving parents.
His point is to strike fear in the one who finds their treasures
here on earth.
Verse 5 says the miscarried child never sees the sun
and that one will have yet that one will have more rest
than the person who had wealth and who had children and long years of life
but was focused on earthly things. And if you look back at verse 3
such a person who focused their on their earthly appetite they were never content.
They were constantly striving after wind grasping for things that could never
be held in their hands and they live in a constant state of
restlessness. They never experienced true joy or lasting satisfaction.
And so the miscarried child is better off than that person.
Now if you look back to chapter 5 if you remember where we were Solomon
has been teaching this theme to us over and again.
In chapter 5 verse 10 you see a person can't be satisfied with wealth.
Verse 11 says the more you earn the more is consumed.
At the close of chapter 5 he says there is something good. There is something good.
This side of glory he says see good in your labor
and your toil appreciate what God gives. As the clay don't expect more than the
potter more from the potter than you ought to.
Says if you do this you won't remember much of the bad times
because you'll be occupied or kept busy with the gladness of enjoyment in your
heart because of the treasure is not what you have and what's been taken away.
But your treasure is whose you are.
Now his comparison in chapter 6 is similar to chapter 4
verses 1 through 3 we covered that many moons ago.
That the miscarried child has an advantage over the one who sees light
but goes into darkness because even though they don't see light
they also never see the evil work done under the sun.
Now the thought that Solomon expresses here is similar to Job
chapter 3. Job expresses the heartache of living through loss this side of
glory. He had a family. He had children. He had wealth. He had
cattle and in a moment it was all taken away.
Then he on top of all of that he received the pain of physical boils from
the bottom of his feet to the top of his head and even his
wife thought it better to curse God and to die.
But after seven days and seven nights of dwelling
of thinking wrestling and enduring his own misery
the first thing that Job did the first thing he spoke
was to curse the day that he was born. The opening of Job 3 focuses on the
lament of a person who feels as if it would have been better to have never
seen goodness than to have seen it to have tasted it
and have it ripped away so painfully so violently.
A person who in his distress thought it better to have never loved
at all. Job states there's no rest for the one
embroiled in turmoil during the vanity of life's difficulties.
I put this passage of Job 3 up on the screen. You can read it.
You can make a note for it for later. Now at this point you should be you
should be feeling a sense of vanity. You should. What's the point? Why press on
when it seems to be better to not even see the light of this life
if all that's left in the end is bitter disappointment.
If we can't enjoy life perhaps we're better off dead.
And that's precisely what Solomon is prodding you to think about.
If your sense of worth if your desires if your appetite
if your identity is rooted in the pleasures and comforts of this age
then wake up.
Rust and moth Jesus said will destroy the things you treasure and it will all be
worthless in the end. Even if you live 2,000 years that's a
thousand years twice verse six says you will one day come to the end of your
earthly life and what if you don't see good things even over all that time
won't all that you labored for disappear what are you going to be left with?
Solomon draws our attention back to verse three that the soul would not be
satisfied with good things even a long life cannot guarantee the satisfaction
of the soul. Living a long life doesn't mean living a full life.
You can have wealth and treasures and honor you can have a full quiver
and many descendants and you can have a long life and a legacy of
accomplishments but none of those things brings ultimate satisfaction none of
those will fill you up none of those will help you to be fulfilled in this
life not on their own. Such things are actually vanity when they can be so
easily ripped away. Verse seven underscores this point all man's labor
is for his mouth his appetite for personal desire is endless think of the
wealthy of this world who don't have an identity in Christ you see them on TV
you see them in social media they have everything the eyes could want right
they have the houses although those are temporary as fire show us right that's
the reality of calamity it can be taken in a moment but then they went to
another house they have the money they have the pleasures of this life they
may even labor hard for what they have they may work endlessly new endeavors
new opportunities new investments they seem busy and occupied with many things
but one thing they lack fulfillment in verse two Solomon said God is the one
who gives power to enjoy or really to eat God satisfies God fulfills and
satisfies a person can labor to fill their mouth that external appetite you
know we desire salty and sweet tangy and spicy smooth and creamy right we can
work hard we can taste all the good things but it's just a taste all you can
do is you think of the hot summer you get one ice cream cone you just get a
hot chocolate you just get a hot chocolate you just get a hot chocolate
that's it and it's taken away that is the nature of chasing desires just a
taste our appetite for our passions the things that we want the things we work
really hard last week we worker and ratio in the last هegs on an original
dinner tree those things are essentially just actors we blame them
in a single little bit I mean it's it's hard but not for us it's important
but these are the things that we try hard to do people beat us
people play the game and we are out of steam just can't keep up
Labor is so hard and we get so worked up over it,
chasing jobs, houses, vocations, all kinds of things.
What else do we work so hard for?
Sometimes for relationships.
Yes, romantic ones, yes, friendships.
We work hard, we wanna be liked.
Who doesn't wanna be liked?
Don't raise your hand.
We wanna be liked, we wanna not be alone.
God created us for community.
Sometimes we labor in wrong ways too.
You know, those other things may be seen as okay,
at least it provides and it's good to not be alone
and so there's some potential goodness,
but you know, sometimes people labor in manipulation.
People labor to get what they want through other people
and lie, cheat, steal.
The point is we work hard for the things that we want.
We work hard for the things that we crave
and all we get is a taste.
Friends, do you see that?
Do you see the futility here?
None of that brings lasting fulfillment.
None of it will make us feel as if we're done
with our accomplishments, that we can end our story.
There's always more money.
There's always more things to be had
and that's the tragic undertone of the story here
and Solomon even draws us back to creation.
In this passage, he references the first man, Adam.
He doesn't just say man, he's referencing Adam
from the created order and he's drawing us back
to that narrative to remind us that even when every tree
in the garden was yielding fruit, you remember the story?
It wasn't enough.
Adam and Eve wanted more.
They were told not to eat of what?
One tree, everything else.
And that word for eat is the same one.
It was used a dozen times in Genesis three
to describe what Adam and Eve did
and it's here in verse two as well, twice.
Do you think that God empowered Adam and Eve
to enjoy their eating of the forbidden fruit?
Do you think he empowered them to enjoy it?
No, they ate it.
And then a massive hole opened up in their soul.
Did it not?
They were not satisfied with what they ate.
But they ate.
You know, verses eight and 11,
nearing the end of this passage,
we have some final questions from Solomon about advantages
and as soon as chapter seven arrives,
he'll no longer ask these same questions.
He will declare to us what is good,
what we ought to pursue.
But here in verse eight, he's drawing us back to verse six.
If you look in your text, he's drawing us back to verse six.
Do they not all go to the same place?
He's reminding the reader,
when your mind is set on earthly things,
that death comes to us all.
We've talked about this time and again,
to the wise man and to the fool,
to the poor man and to the rich.
So maybe a person has been looking at chapters five
and now six and they're thinking, okay,
so wealth is the problem.
Money is the problem.
If I get rid of riches, then I'll find joy.
And to that, Solomon says, there's no advantage.
There is no advantage.
It is not more desirable to live an aesthetic life
or a life of impoverished religious piety
devoid of the attractions of wealth
than it is to bask in wealth
when both people end up dying one day.
There's no advantage.
You can't win when your focus is on the things of this earth,
whether by having all the things
or denying yourself all the things.
So a person can be diligent to labor,
but without God, all their work is not a virtue, but a vice.
Solomon is drawing the reader
to think about their cosmology.
What is the end of every person?
What will happen to everyone, someday, sometime?
And we've covered this before, death.
Death is the great equalizer
to all the soap bubbles of our lives.
It pops every single one of them.
Now in verse nine, Solomon gives a bit of instruction.
Oh, I think I went too far.
Let's stay here.
He's saying it's better to see something good with your eyes
than to have the soul chase after desire.
It's better to be content with your desires
than to be content with what God gives
than to follow desires that can never be fulfilled.
And that's a note from the Geneva Bible, actually.
Better to witness something real
and something good than to chase after things
that will never be.
Solomon is addressing the soul again, and very clearly.
These past six chapters,
he's been confronting the religious person,
not the unbeliever,
the religious person who half-heartedly acknowledges God,
sometimes loves his neighbor when it's convenient,
who chases after all the shiny things
that this life has to offer
and still doubts what happens in the end.
The person who stores up for themselves treasures on earth.
The person who gets upset when things don't go their way.
And to that person, he says,
what your soul chases is vanity.
You are trying to grasp things you can't hold.
So stop chasing soap bubbles.
Stop trying to fill your life
with temporary things in this age.
Now, my confidence in that exhortation in verse nine
is because of the verses that follow.
In verse 10, he draws us back to creation again.
He reminds us that Adam has already named everything.
It's already been done.
Better yet, this is another way of him saying,
there's nothing new under the sun.
You've heard that before.
Now, that first Adam was no more able to contend
or dispute with God than any of us are today.
That word actually, dispute or contend, in your Bible,
it carries a connotation of being a judge,
of actually having some governance, some kind of authority.
The sense here is that God controls everything
and man cannot tell God what to do or how to do it.
And man cannot execute judgment against God
for things being the way they are.
We can't say to God, that's not fair.
How many of us are guilty of that?
Yeah, I think every hand here would go up.
And I can't read your heart,
but I know that that's a human condition.
Because at some point in our lives,
we look at the things around us, we look at the suffering,
we look at what we don't have that we want,
and we say, that's not fair.
And our judgment is not against the thing in this life.
Our judgment against the one who is sovereign
over all things, because he didn't give it to us.
And we as Christians, in our little bubble
of proper theology, we may say, I would never say that.
Yes, you would, and you did.
And God will judge you one day for it in love,
because he loves you, Christian, because he loves you.
So he doesn't want you to persist in that.
And that's why wisdom literature is so needed,
to wound us, to pierce us, to poke us, to prod us,
to help us to wrestle with these hard truths.
The sense is that, in this text right now,
in verse 10, is that God controls everything.
Man cannot tell God what to do or how to do it.
We can't say that's not fair.
And here's the backup.
You saw the verses a second ago.
Isaiah 45, nine, woe to the one who contends,
same word, with his maker, an earthenware vessel
among the vessels of the earth.
Will the clay say to the potter, what are you doing?
Or the thing you are making say, he has no hand,
no, you can't contend, you can't contend with the potter.
Isaiah 45, 12, a few verses later,
it is I who made the earth and created man upon it.
I stretched out the heavens with my hands
and I commanded all their hosts.
Can any of us even fathom what that was like?
Psalm 103, man is dust, right?
As for man, his days are like grass.
As a flower the field, so he flowers.
James one, verse 10, the rich man is the potter,
rich man is the boast and his humiliation
because like flowering grass, he will pass away.
Wealth doesn't gain you anything in the end.
First Peter one, 24 through 25, all flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers and the flower falls off.
Some of you know this,
but the word of the Lord endures forever.
The last one on the screen there, Jeremiah 18 six.
Can I not, O house of Israel,
deal with you as this potter does?
Declares Yahweh, behold, like clay in the potter's hand,
so you are in my hand, O house of Israel.
So friends, scripture is clear.
It's known what man is.
It's known that we are not able
to execute judgment against God.
We are not able to contend with his ways.
So verse 11 reminds us that even our words become vanity.
When we try to reason with God,
when we try to win him to our way of thinking,
what we want things to be.
Romans chapter nine, verse 20 and 21,
says on the contrary, who are you, O man,
who answers back to God?
Will the thing molded say to the molder,
why did you make me like this?
Or does not the potter have authority over the clay
to make from the same lump
one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
And the Old Testament counterpart to that in Job chapter 40,
Yahweh answers Job after all of his suffering
and Job begins to say things that he ought not to.
And Yahweh answers him.
He says, now gird up your loins like a man.
I will ask you and you make me know.
Here's the question.
Will you really annul my judgment?
Will you condemn me that you may be justified?
Do you have an arm like God?
Do you have power like God?
And can you thunder with a voice like his?
Friends, even if you're unhappy with your lot in life,
can you really argue with God
and tell him that he is wrong to you?
Can you accuse the Almighty of doing something against you?
Who are you to answer back?
Who are you to contend with God?
See, in these cases, words are just vanity.
The more we speak, the emptier our words become.
Notice that in verse 10, Solomon spoke of this contending
or this disputing with God
as executing a judgment against him, condemning him.
So you see in these corresponding scriptures,
no one can condemn God
and no one can truly do anything against him.
So people are powerless against God.
The best we can do is use our words against the Almighty.
And to that, Solomon says, it's just vanity.
What advantage can your words produce?
Man's words against the Almighty do nothing to the Creator
except serve as an indictment to the man.
You build your argument against God
and you're building an argument against yourself.
That's what he's saying.
Now there's a potential connection here
with the Tower of Babel.
Some of you know Genesis 11,
the whole earth had the same words at the time
and their goal was to build a tower
to make a name for themselves to contend with God.
Now the pride of mankind reached such a height
that God then scattered the people into this day.
We have confused languages.
We have confused languages, but they literally
built their own indictment as a structure.
They literally built it.
Today we often build our own indictment with our words,
what we say.
So many words and yet so much vanity.
But the encouragement for us here,
I have to go to another passage to prove it,
but we don't need to persist in this.
We don't need to persist in this vanity.
We talked about Job a good bit today,
so I wanna show you how Job finally responded.
Job 42, it's his repentance.
And he clearly acknowledges that Yahweh can do all things.
And he spoke of things he didn't understand.
It was vanity in his words.
Now he said these things after everything he suffered
and then he repented in dust and in ash.
And so Job answered Yahweh, I know you can do all things
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
Therefore I've declared that which I did not understand.
Things too marvelous for me, which I did not know.
Therefore I reject myself and I repent in dust and ashes.
See this is the proper response for a person
when they're humbled.
When they see they can't contend with the potter.
That their life is completely in the hands
of an almighty God.
And so the response then is to repent, to bow low.
To admit that we know nothing in comparison to his glory.
And consider this, ideally everyone who suffers
any grievous loss, every believer that suffers
such pain and heartache, even the loss of loved ones
like Job did, would arrive at the same conclusion.
That God alone can do all things.
That his will is always accomplished.
And that our complaints against his will are sinful.
Because his ways are too marvelous for us to understand.
As we're looking at the close of this chapter,
right before the final verse, I want us to pause.
Solomon's been playing a chess game this whole time.
He's been reasoning and confronting
the mind of the reader since the beginning of this work.
In chapter one, he brought that difficult truth to swallow.
He confronted us with a statement, all this vanity.
And he was calling into question the purpose
or the point of man's toil.
Why do we labor so hard?
What advantage?
What do we stand to gain in this life of difficulty?
He even said wisdom was a vain pursuit
without eternal purpose.
Now going into chapter two, then Solomon brought receipts.
He showed us.
He gave us observations.
He gave us the proofs that support the claim
that all is vanity.
He pointed out chasing satisfaction proved futile.
Even trying to find your worth in your work was pointless,
he said, it was vanity.
And then he began to drop clear statements
about God's sovereignty.
In chapter three, he addressed the nature of time,
that famous passage in appointed time,
how all things are given a time, and even how man has eternity
written in his heart, yet is unable to find out
God's work from beginning to end, therefore vanity.
Solomon reminded us that we are but dust
amidst the difficulties in this life, vanity.
And in chapter four, he gave us some advice
about how to see good in that rat race of life.
And then he reminded us that whether you're
a prince or a pauper, all things come and go and come again,
just like a hamster wheel, over and over, vanity.
He confronted our half-hearted approach
to worship in the opening of chapter five.
And then he plainly pointed out the vanity of materialism
and of wealth.
And now, in chapter six, he underscores everything
that happened previous.
And he points to a question to draw us to listen and to learn.
Who knows what is good during man's lifetime?
If it is but a shadow, hear one moment and gone the next.
Who can tell a man what will come after life under the sun?
Now, before we answer, don't forget who he was writing to.
He was writing to Israel, the same covenant people
that his father David represented,
the same people who easily forget the Lord God, people
just like us, who see the glitz and the glamour of the world
and forget the goodness and the glory of God.
So if you want to know what is good for man
during his lifetime, you need to seek out
someone other than a man.
You need God's thoughts to answer this question.
If you want to know what's going to be after your life when
you die, you can't seek a human out
to tell you what's going to come because they died.
You need God's knowledge.
So these questions, they confront the mind
that is set on the flesh, on the materialistic things here,
and now the pleasures of life under the sun.
And Solomon is punching one more time
at those spiritual kidneys that we talked about.
So can you answer these questions
that he posed without God?
Can you say what is good and what will come after you
without God's wisdom and knowledge shared with you?
Here's a simple defining characteristic
of a person who has a materialistic mind.
It's a person who has no absolutes.
It's that person who says, hmm.
It's a good question.
I don't know.
This question is designed to poke that person
to some kind of definition.
Even if they can't be certain about what comes after death,
they can at least try to say what is
good for man's fleeting days.
Solomon's pointed out, chasing satisfaction and wealth, power,
legacy, work, it's all pointless.
So who can say what is good?
Do you see how he's backed that person into a corner?
So at the end, the materialistic mind
just has to say things that we hear today.
You know the sayings.
You do you.
Make yourself happy.
Make choices that spark joy in your life.
And say, good is how you define it.
Everyone can have a different definition.
That's why love is love, right?
That's why gender is a construct, right?
Do you see?
You see where this goes without absolutes?
Absolute truth helps us.
Now, God doesn't promise to answer every question
that we have.
But he gives us enough so that we can live,
so that we can pursue what is good,
so that we don't have to live a vain life.
God can tell us what will be after life under the sun.
Here's something fascinating.
Solomon wrote this some 400 years
before those eschatological visions
that Ezekiel and Daniel had.
Over 1,000 years before John's vision
of the revelation of Christ.
So those things focused on future things, right?
What comes after?
But even without those works being divinely penned,
Solomon keeps pointing the reader to consider
what comes after death.
To wrestle with the reality of eternity
being written in our hearts.
And so for now, it's good to pause,
to consider what we know and to consider how we know it.
If we profess to know what is good,
it must come from God's word.
If we profess to know what comes after this life,
it must come from God's word that endures how long?
Forever.
Now friends, I know this passage is heavy.
It's intended to be.
We have to stretch our reasoning, our ability
to think when it comes to wisdom literature.
But this chapter was necessary because at the end of chapter
five, that materialistic person, they
may have thought that they could somehow pursue the enjoyment
of wealth and work.
But they would have missed something.
Because in verse 19 of chapter five,
Solomon said that you could be glad in your labor
to eat from your portion, but not
to just find your joy in the things that are given to you
that you wanted.
We are never given things, this side of glory,
to take our eyes off of God.
If God gives good things, it's so that you're redirected back
to Him to pay attention to eternal realities.
So chapter six then serves as a countermeasure to chapter five
to show that even if a person sees that toil and that trouble
even in this life are necessary, that if you
labor apart from God, it's vanity.
Vanity.
And that's the thing.
Apart from God.
Pursuing wealth, pursuing family, pursuing long years,
apart from God.
Living your best life now, YOLO, all of that
is no more than selfish vanity.
So Solomon tells us to see the good things,
to recognize them when they're given, but take heed.
Don't chase the desires of your heart for vain glory.
We need wisdom from above to discern
what is good during this short shadow of a life.
And thankfully, chapter seven is going
to begin to show us the way forward.
And so Lord willing, we'll get to dig into that in about
a month from now.
But to sum up chapter six, I would say this.
Achievement without God brings no happiness.
And arguing with the Almighty is more pointless
than chasing the wind.
So how does that affect how you live?
Don't marvel at life when it's awful.
Marvel when it's good.
Right?
See, the danger of good days is that you come to expect them,
like Job, and then you're crushed
when they cease, when they end.
So instead of expecting only blessings,
pay attention to the good things that God has given.
Cultivate gratitude in your heart,
even with the burdens that life brings.
And don't find your joy in creation.
Don't find your joy and your comfort and your hope
and your security and things that have been created.
Find those things in the Creator.
This past week, we had our Monday night C group.
It just started studying James.
We were only a few verses in.
But we covered through chapter one, verse four.
And I was listening to TJ teach, and I
was fascinated by the phrasing by James at the end of verse
four.
I put on the screen.
I think some of us are familiar.
Was it already on the screen?
No.
It's not on the screen.
It's in your Bible.
That's where it is.
It was going to be on the screen.
James chapter one, verse four, some of us are familiar with this
about the nature of trials and testing and perseverance
and what that brings.
As I was reading, though, I had an aha moment.
I shared it with our group on Monday,
and I wanted to share it with you this morning.
And speaking about trials, as we've been studying,
James encourages believers to count it all joy.
Not that the trial itself is enjoyable.
Trials suck.
Trials are hard.
We can say that.
You don't need to say that a trial, it was so great.
No.
God is great in the trial.
He may have taught you something,
but the trial itself sucks.
Death, for example, death is an enemy.
We come to expect it because we know it's coming,
but it's an enemy, and it's the last enemy
that will be destroyed.
Death is not a friend.
We don't greet death like an old friend,
but we greet the life that is to come through death.
Amen?
So the trial sucks.
But knowing, amen, thank you, Tan.
But knowing that whatever God gives is for our greatest good
enables us to choose joy.
Because whatever he's given is for our greatest good,
and we can choose joy in the storms of life.
So when we're tested, that word tested,
it's that refining metal.
You guys know this.
If you've been in the church, you've heard this.
When you heat up metal, it's that refining metal.
When you heat up metal and the dross
starts to come to the top, it's the dirty stuff, the dregs,
right?
And they can be separated so you have the valuable metals
testing to see what the value and the worth of that metal
is.
And that's the perseverance nature.
It perfects.
It brings up all those impurities, right?
So going through trials refine us,
and they conform us to the image of Christ.
But there's that little phrase at the end of verse 4,
that the conclusion of perseverance
having its perfect work, that we would be complete,
lacking in nothing.
And that's what got me.
So I was looking at that last part about lacking nothing.
And the language wasn't clear in the Greek.
And there's nothing wrong with our English Bibles,
but I was wanting more, so I was studying.
I was looking it up.
Now, that word lacking, it could be rendered as needing,
but it could also be rendered as leaving or left behind.
So as we think about James with the connection of testing
metal to prove something is real and pure,
we can look at verse 4 this way.
As we're tested through our trials,
we rely on God, trusting Him through all of our ways.
And the work of perseverance, notice it says,
perseverance has its perfect work, not our perfect work.
The work of perseverance results in our complete satisfaction,
our fulfillment.
Because God is going to see to it
that all the trials take away only the dross,
the things that we don't need.
We won't lack the good things, according to the Lord,
because He's going to transform us from the inside out.
God is going to give us by the Spirit and the Word
the right desires so that our souls will not be lacking.
God will help us to hunger and thirst for righteousness
as we submit all that we are to Him.
Now, everything He keeps from us is to help us remain in Him.
Isn't that amazing?
Everything He cuts away from us is needed to be cut away
to conform us to Christ.
And in Him, we will lack not one thing needed
to receive the crown of life at the end.
All right, let's pray, friends.
God, as we wrap up studying your Word in Ecclesiastes 6,
we ask for your help.
Please help us to think rightly about our lives,
about what we have, and about what we want.
God, we need your help to convict us of our wrong thinking.
So please help us to look for good things.
The things that you provide that help us to hunger and thirst
for righteousness rather than our own selfish desires.
God, we would ask that you encourage
our hearts amidst trouble, amidst the trials of this life.
Help to empower us to press on toward joy
in the midst of our trials.
We know that the trial is painful and on purpose.
But when you're ripping away things that are not you
and the things we worship that are not you,
may we be thankful.
And so help us to choose joy even in the troubles
of this broken life.
God, we ask you to help us long more for the eternal state,
the perfect home, rather than this temporary life.
This is vanity fair.
Help us to praise your name for the good things
that we receive this set of glory.
Even though they're temporary, may we be grateful.
But may we not expect only blessing.
And God, we ask that you would give us grace
to better understand that we are the clay.
Help us to grow in our understanding
of our position that we are part of creation.
Help us understand your incredible distinctness
as the potter, as the maker, as the creator.
And help us not to contend with your will.
For the believers in here this morning,
Father, help us to remember that eternal rest is
found in Christ, that Christ is the best blessing,
that He's the greatest treasure, that He's the secret even
to true and lasting joy.
And for those who do not know Him,
I pray this morning would be used
to confront that materialistic mind to question
why they're here, and that there is hope.
But it's only found in being brought
to the end of ourselves.
So God, may we turn away from the vanity
of this world, of our fickle hearts,
and learn how to kill our sinful tendencies.
Help us.
By the power of your spirit and by the absolute truth
of your word, our prayer is that our hearts would be more
oriented towards you.
So even now, as we praise your name,
singing together, lifting up our voices in song,
help us to let go of our earthly expectations in this life.
And help us to cling to something that is everlasting,
to cling to the promises of your son, Jesus Christ,
in whose name we pray.
Amen.