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If I had written the Book of Ecclesiastes, I would have stopped at the end of chapter 2. It would have been a very, very short book. It would have been like 2 John, Jude, or Philemon.
Solomon has written a wonderful conclusion—for any person to find ultimate meaning in life, he has to go outside of himself to God. Sounds like a great way to end a book to me. Let's close with a rousing hymn and go home.
But there are another ten chapters to the Book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon kept writing because he knew we would have a problem with God. In some ways, we'll have as much of a problem with God as we had without Him in the first few chapters. That's something I love about the Book of Ecclesiastes: Solomon is brutally honest.
An Outline of Ecclesiastes
Following the Logic of Solomon
II. A Critique of Belief and of Life with God: 3:1-15
He decrees pain as well as pleasure (3:1-11).
So enjoy the moment now (3:12-15).
A little girl in my church is named Sally. She was marvelous at ballet. She was beautiful, smart, and about nine years old when her life took a harsh turn. She went up to visit her grandparents in the Midwest one time and after she arrived, she started running a fever, then had a seizure and kept having them all night long. The doctors said they had to stop her seizures or she would die, so they put her in a coma. They waited and then slowly brought her out of it, but the seizures began again and have never been brought completely under control.
Now that beautiful, intelligent, talented little girl has permanent brain damage. Her parents, who love the Lord, have to watch Sally grow up. She's through with ballet. She cannot attend the same school. She looks at you with eyes that seem to be hunting for something to connect with. What would you say to her parents?
I know another man who is a spokesman for a Christian organization and has served God all of his days. He had a son that wandered from the faith and got in trouble. For years, he prayed and prayed and prayed for his son and lived with the consequences of his son's actions; finally his son surrendered his life to Jesus Christ.
Not long after that, his son was going to work one morning on his motorcycle when he crossed an intersection, got hit, and was killed immediately.
This committed Christian man—the boy's father—cried out in his pain to God, saying something that he never thought would come out of his mouth. He said, “God, I take better care of Your children than You do of mine.” He shared his honest feelings about the tragedy with God.
If we want to deal with the world as it really is, we are going to have problems with God. When bad things occur, what are your solutions? Do accidents really happen to people? Is Satan the cause of every bad thing in the world? How would you answer these questions?
Solomon shows that no matter how you slice it, the sovereignty of God lies behind everything that happens. The existence of evil is one of the great philosophical problems of all time: How did evil come into existence from an all-holy God?
In many ways Satan is sometimes easier to understand than God. Satan in a sense is very simplistic. He is a being of pure evil. That means his reasons for doing everything he does are easily understood.
God, however, is a problem. It's often difficult to interpret His actions in the short-term. If He's good and all-powerful, why is there so much suffering in the world?
It's this problem with God that Solomon tackles in Ecclesiastes 3.
There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven— (v. 1)
Solomon says that however we try to resolve the fact that evil exists and God is good, we can't do it by saying that God is not in control. In this section Solomon clearly states that God has a plan and does not waver from it. He is the one who has made the appointed time for everything. Solomon was a Calvinist long before there was a Calvin.
Entire books are devoted to just this subject of predestined activity in life, so we can't give it full treatment here. I will choose to affirm what the Bible affirms. God is sovereign over everything. He is not always pleased, but He is never perplexed. No evil action skirts His plan. No piece of the puzzle is left over at the end. Either God is sovereign or He is not. Solomon goes on to reiterate and explain his point.
A time to give birth, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted.
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to tear down, and a time to build up.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to throw stones, and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace, and a time to shun embracing.
A time to search, and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away.
A time to tear apart, and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time for war, and a time for peace. (vv. 2-8)
Solomon says it doesn't matter if you're a man or a dandelion, there is a purpose for your birth, your death, and everything in between. God has appointed a time for everything that happens.
A day will come in God's sovereign plan when you will receive a phone call telling you that your parents are dead. Your time will be to weep. But it won't last forever because there will be a time when you will get a big promotion or finally move into your dream home, and then you will laugh.
Solomon says life is going to be like this and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. You'll have children and you will laugh. Then one day you'll cry because of those children. That's the way it is. There are times of happiness and times of pain. If you don't die from something unexpected, there will be a day when you will weep over some diagnosis. All of these things are ordained. We cannot know what life will bring.
There is a time that you destroy something by throwing stones, but there's also a time that you gather stones to build something. There will be a time for you to embrace, but there will also be times when you don't want anyone around.
There will come a time that you will be full of hope and will want to search. There will also be a time when you will be hopeless and want to give up. The things you own will be useful for a while, and you will want to keep them. But one day you will take your stuff to Goodwill; it's time to throw it away.
There will be a time for agony. You will hurt so bad, you will want to tear your clothes. And then there will be a time to sew up the tears because the pain is gone. There will be times when you will want to keep your mouth shut and times when you just have to tell somebody something.
There'll be a time for love. There will also be a time of rejection.
That's a fact. All of these things are appointed.
Solomon says that God is not your genie. God does not cooperate with us the way we think He should. He doesn't behave. As was said of Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia, “He is not a tame lion.” And when we realize this, it leads us to a very human response.
What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils? (v. 9)
We say to ourselves, “Why should I work so hard when it's all going to be destroyed? Why get married when you just end up fighting and hurting one another? Why have a child and deal with the stress and disappointment? Why should I go on living when I know at some point I'm going to get the twenty-four-hour stomach flu?”
Personally, I'd rather die than have the stomach flu. Don't you just love waking up disoriented at 3 A.M. and being sick for about forty-five minutes straight? Guess what? Your lucky bout with it is coming!
Solomon is playing the devil's advocate here. He is saying what all of us think and sometimes wish we could say. What profit is there? Everything gets undone and it's all been ordained anyway. It is easy to get cynical.
Do you ever feel like that? What's the use? Why not punt? Solomon put this into perspective.
I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves.
He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. (vv. 10-11)
In the first two chapters of Ecclesiastes, Solomon tells us that there is no hope unless we turn to God. Now we have a bigger problem because we have turned to God. We find out that He has given us this life of vanity and toil. He has appointed everything that happens in our lives.
How do you live in a world that is out of your control? How do you live with a God who doesn't always make sense? Again, the Hebrew translation of “sons of men” in verse 10 is “sons of Adam,” reminding us of the fallen state of man. It's just hard to be a fallen man in a fallen world.
From verse 11 to the end of chapter 3, Solomon gives us four platforms that can help us stand. The first one is that God's plan is wise. God is wise, and even bad things have a purpose. He makes everything appropriate or beautiful in its time.
When an appointed thing occurs, it may not seem that it has any purpose whatsoever, but God sees it from a totally different perspective.
I was teaching this idea in our church and had asked Norma, a wonderful pianist, if she would play for the congregation. I asked her to play “Jesus Loves Me” using only the white keys. When she played, it had a very simple sound. Frankly, it wasn't very interesting.
Next I asked her to play it using as many black keys as she wanted. If you've ever played a piano, you know that by themselves the black keys don't sound very good. That's where all the sharps and flats are. But when Norma played “Jesus Loves Me” and included the black keys, it created a lush, beautiful sound. I asked my congregation to vote on whether they liked it with the white keys only or with the black keys added in. Without a doubt, the song sounds better with the black keys.
Life is just like a song played on the piano. It is a caricature without the black keys. It's not heroic without sin, evil, and pain. You don't know or appreciate the heroism, love, and patience of God until evil enters the world.
I enjoy a good movie, and one of the most interesting and unique movies I've seen in a long time was The Truman Show with Jim Carey. I went to see it with my wife and son and did not know anything about the plot before the movie started. After about fifteen minutes of watching the movie, I leaned over to my wife, Teresa, and said, “Something's wrong here.” Everything going on in the movie was perfect—no difficulties to move the plot forward—and it was obvious that Jim Carey was overacting. Frankly, it was boring.
Then a few things start to unravel, and you find out why his life is perfect. Ed Harris's character has contrived this world for Truman where there is no evil and nothing bad can happen to him. But there is also no heroism, no real friendship, no real love, no virtue, and certainly nothing worth living for. Ultimately, Truman refuses to live in this “perfect” world any longer.
That's what life would be like if you didn't have black keys.
The parts of our lives that don't feel right at the time are woven together by God to form a beautiful tapestry. God's plan is wise—it's just that He doesn't ask you and me for our opinions. There is no suggestion box in the tabernacle. We have to trust Him.
When I was eleven years old, one of the most tragic incidents in my life happened. If you have ever been involved in Little League baseball, you know that there is almost nothing more important than making the cut as an eleven-year-old All-Star. I was not selected for the team, and what's worse, two of my eleven-year-old buddies were. I was utterly devastated.
My mother sat down with me on my bed and said, “Let me tell you a story.” She told me about a guy in the Bible who had a promise from God that he would be a ruler. But he was thrown in a pit and sold into slavery. Then he was thrown into jail and forgotten. Through all of his disappointments, he kept doing the right thing because he believed in trusting God's promise. Later when Joseph looked back on those harsh experiences, he saw that God used them to get him in a position to save his family.
My mother said to me, “Tommy, there will be a lot of times in your life when God does things that don't seem to have any rhyme or reason whatsoever. You've got to trust Him even when He doesn't give you the answer.” Pretty good counsel, wasn't it? Believing that God is wise is the only thing that will sustain you when He plays your life on the black keys.
Solomon shows us that not only is God's plan wise, but it is also mysterious. Solomon says in verse 11 that God has one plan from beginning to the end. He doesn't react to the devil's activities as though a cosmic tennis match is being played.
It's not as though God created man, then Satan tempted him. Then God decided to kick man out of the garden. So Satan caused Him to corrupt civilization. Then God countered with a flood … and so on.
No, God has a plan like a Beethoven sonata, beautifully intermingling white keys and black keys. The white keys by themselves are boring. The black keys by themselves are troublesome. When you put them together, they're lovely.
Still, there is mystery. God put eternity in the heart of every person, and in every person is the question why. All through the Bible we see men of God ask why bad things are happening. Habakkuk says,
Why hast Thou made men like the fish of the sea,
Like creeping things without a ruler over them? (1:14)
He is asking God, “Where are You?”
Jeremiah says to God,
Why has my pain been perpetual
And my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?
Wilt Thou indeed be to me like a deceptive stream
With water that is unreliable? (15:18)
Jeremiah is saying to God, “You promised, and it sure seems like You are not there.”
Have you ever wondered where God was or whether He cared? Why do we ask those questions? Because He has set eternity in our hearts. We intrinsically know that there has to be some order and purpose to life.
So even though we can recognize God's work or purpose in some things, we squint our eyes and try to figure out all the things we can't see. We ask questions like, “Why was I born this way? Why did my father treat me that way? Why did You take my friend? Why am I missing out on this blessing?” We squint but we can't see. He's put eternity in our hearts but won't give us all the answers.
As one author said, “There is a deep-seated, compulsive drive to transcend our mortality by knowing the meaning and destiny of life.”
It's troublesome. We want to see the future outcome of problems and say, “So that's why You let this happen to me.” But God says, “I'm sorry, I'm not going to show you.” He does things in our lives that are not pleasing or pleasurable, but they are wise. Solomon says we have to trust Him.
God is wise but He is also mysterious. In verse 12 we see Solomon's third platform for life.
I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime.
Solomon wants to tell us that even when we don't understand everything God is doing, we cannot let what we cannot know destroy what we can enjoy. You can't be God and control circumstances. There's nothing you can do about that. So don't let it negate your present enjoyment of life.
Every week I counsel Christians who are upset because they are not God. I see the torment they experience because they can't deal with their helplessness and confusion. But the truth is that they've never been able to understand everything that was occurring, good or bad. So what should we do?
Solomon tells us not to get cynical and unhappy; instead, we should do good in our lifetime. In this short life you have to trust God and do good. And in verse 13, Solomon says life does not have to be meaningless.
Moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor—it is the gift of God.
John Piper wrote a great book called Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. That title may make you nervous, but I love it. I love it because there is a blessedness in seeking pleasure the way God intended. We are to enjoy pleasure.
Everyone is going to die. As you read this book, the clock is ticking. The twenty-four-hour virus is waiting on you. There are germs on your teeth that will cause cavities. One day you'll have to have a root canal. All of those things are bad and they are coming.
So today, while everything's OK, go get a double dip of Rocky Road ice cream (or whatever flavor you favor) in a waffle cone. Take some friends with you, lick your ice cream slowly, and just enjoy being together. Call an old friend you haven't spoken to in six months and get caught up. Rent a movie you've wanted to see and curl up on the sofa with some hot popcorn.
Jesus put it like this: “Do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself” (Matt. 6:34). Enjoy today—trust God and have fun. We all know that you'll eventually have that virus, and that root canal is so certain that it may as well already be scheduled, and one night you'll receive a phone call telling you your father has passed on. So today you need to go get your two dips of Rocky Road.
I like that. I don't know what my life holds. Some day, a doctor may look up from his chart and tell me he found something that shouldn't be in me. I'll get cut, burned, and poisoned with a cancer treatment and I'll be pretty miserable. But today I'm doing OK. So I'm going to get together with some good buddies and enjoy our conversation.
On Wednesday night, I've got a date. Maybe I'll take my wife to get some Italian and order some chicken parmigiana. I'll talk to my lovely wife and eat that good food and afterward, I'll get a little cheesecake and a cup of coffee. It will be wonderful. Maybe there'll be a little Johnny Mathis playing in the background.
I know the day is coming when they'll find something in me, or some car will cross the yellow line and hit me head-on, or this body will just wear out. But I refuse to let what I can't control destroy what I can enjoy. The third platform that we can stand on is to chill out and enjoy life while we can.
The final platform is to rest in the sovereignty of God. Look at what Solomon says in verse 14.
I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him.
God's sovereignty is not meant to trouble us; it is meant to comfort us. Whenever anything horrible happens, there is only one thing I have to know: God is in control. His plan is unchangeably perfect.
If I left my office today and found out my wife had died, I would be devastated and I would mourn, cry, and wail. And you know what? God would not tell me why. He refuses to explain Himself to us.
But I do have to know one thing—and if I can't be sure of this I don't want to go on. I have to know that He is in charge and that His plan is good.
I have no problem with God allowing things that do not fit in my framework because I know I am a fool. But I will not live in a universe that is run by evil. If God is that weak, then I will crawl into bed and pull the covers up and never come out.
Have you ever been repelling off the top of a cliff, where you turn, walk backward to the edge of the cliff, and then jump? Before you jump, you don't just whistle to any handy bystander and say, “Hey, buddy, can you come here and hold this rope?” No, you find someone you trust who will make sure you and the rope are secure, then you jump.
Solomon tells us in verse 14 that everything God does will remain forever. He is not shortsighted and wondering how it will all work out.
He also says there is nothing to take away from what God has done. There is no red ink on God's decree. You don't add to it and you don't take away from it: it's perfect.
And the goal is that men would fear Him. God is not trying to produce cynicism, but reverent fear. He wants to create trust in us. Mystery shouldn't repel us; it should make us bow.
That which is has been already, and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by. (v. 15)
Everything that is happening now has been decreed in the past. Everything in the future will happen according to plan. And God seeks or fulfills what is lost from a human point of view. In other words, in God's wise arrangement of events, He can call back (seek) the past and connect it with the future.
It's like when you work on a jigsaw puzzle and have one piece that just stumps you. So you set it aside and work on the rest of the puzzle. At some point you find a perfect place for your piece and you seek what has passed by.
God is perfect. Even though there are events in your life that don't make sense right now, when it's all said and done, God will seek what has passed by. He will insert that piece of the puzzle that finishes the whole picture. Painful and bad things happened in my life, but later on, God sought what passed by. Then I said, “Aha!”
In The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom gives a wonderful example of this truth. She and her sister Betsy were being held in a concentration camp. Betsy said that they still had to trust God and thank Him for everything.
We're talking hard-core Christianity. Everything about the camp was awful—being in the middle of a war, being separated from family, and watching other prisoners die. But day in and day out, the things that Corrie hated above everything else were the lice that bit her in bed. It was miserable. She couldn't get away from them. It was impossible to get a good night's sleep.
One time when Corrie and Betsy were thanking God for everything, Betsy interrupted Corrie at the end of her prayer and said, “And the bedbugs, Corrie—thank God for those lice.” Corrie thought her sister was crazy, but she thanked God for bedbugs by faith.
After they had been at the camp a few days, they started a Bible study in their barracks—an unauthorized activity that would've provoked the guards. But the guards never came into their barracks to break up the study or order them to quit. They always wondered why.
Later Corrie learned it was because the guards were afraid of catching the lice.
It turned out that the shield of God around Corrie and Betsy Ten Boom was a bedbug. Do you see how God seeks what passes by? Only God could use a bedbug!
Again, these are Solomon's four platforms: God is wise; God is mysterious; enjoy today; and rest in the sovereignty of God.
Another thought also helps me deal with the evil I can't explain. The greatest act of “injustice” that has ever happened took place about two thousand years ago. The only perfect person who ever lived, the divine man, was rejected, betrayed, denied, tortured, put on a cross, and killed. He, of all people, didn't deserve any of it.
Jesus was the one person who did everything God required of Him. He did not fail or err in a single point. And what did He get for all His obedience and righteousness? He got tortured and nailed to a cross to suffocate to death. What good could possibly come out of an evil like that?
Yet God turned the most evil thing that has ever happened into the best thing that has ever happened. Today we can celebrate Jesus's suffering and death because He triumphed over sin and rose from the grave. For three days, it didn't make sense. On the third day, everything became clear. Jesus had been “delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23).
No matter what you are going through right now, you have not faced anything like Calvary. The purpose of that evil experience was so you and I could be secure in heaven. Now if God can do that, can't He take your situations and use them for His good? Will He explain it all to you? He will not.
God doesn't promise that there will be a “third day” when we will understand all the bad things that have happened in our lives. But He does give us the promises we need to place all our trust in Him.
He requires one thing of you in the face of this uncertainty: Don't let what you can't control destroy what you can enjoy.
1. Do you agree that there are no easy answers to explain God's allowance of painful events? Why or why not?
2. What is the first of the four platforms Solomon gives us? Why is it important that life is also “played on the black keys”?
3. What is the second platform? Why does God make us want to know why and then not provide the answers?
4. What is the third platform? How have you applied this truth to your life in the past? How can you take this truth to heart today?
5. What is the fourth platform? How does the death of Christ serve as an example of this truth?