The Hard Realities of Life

Okay, we are in the Book of Ecclesiastes and so open your Bible, please, through Ecclesiastes chapter 3. One of the things I love so much about the Book of Ecclesiastes is that Solomon is really giving us a biblical philosophy of life. And I love that about this book. It is so relevant and so pertinent. What Solomon is doing, and he starts in dealing with an audience that he knows will be largely unaware of the scriptures, even his Jewish audience, and particularly the broader audience of Gentile nations to whom he is writing, Solomon begins by saying, okay, I want to start with common ground. We all face this in life. And what we all face is that the routine sameness and monotony of life, the day in day out, get up another day and go ahead and begin that kind of thing, eventually causes all of us to ask the question, isn't there more to life than this? And there's some meaning and purpose that is beyond just the daily grind and routine of life. So, Solomon begins with that and draws in his audience. He then proposes in chapters 1 and 2, several different ways that people go about seeking meaning and purpose in life. For instance, some people just pour themselves into a thirst and attainment of knowledge, thinking, if I just get more knowledge, I can solve all the riddles of life. I can get all the answers that I'm looking for. Some people dive headlong into pleasure, just have as much fun as I can have, or materialism, get as much as I can get while I'm here, because this is where it's at. Some people dive headlong into their work and try to find fulfillment, deep purposeful meaning, life's answers in their work and pouring themselves into it to become a work of holly. And Solomon lists all of those things and then he says at the end of chapter 2, that's not where it's at. He says that true meaning and fulfillment in life will be found only as you begin with a relationship with God and you learn to view life and enjoy life and accept life from his perspective. Closing out then that major first thrust of his book, he begins in chapter 3 to turn the corner. If you understand that a biblical philosophy of life must begin with a relationship with God, that's where it has to begin. Then you can start putting the other pieces of the puzzle together. And one of the big pieces of that puzzle, in fact the first thing Solomon says we need to understand is that God has a plan for life. That incorporates all things that happen in life. And so he introduces that in chapter 3 and carries on that theme through chapter 5. He begins in chapter 3 by saying God's overall plan includes all things. There's a time for everything and he lists 14 different extremes in life and says God puts together all of those things and makes them beautiful in his time. And he says how do we accept that? How do we respond to that? And he basically says as we saw last week that we need to view life from God's perspective, we need to enjoy life as he unfolds it day by day. We need to accept life as he gives it to us and then we need to learn the lessons that he wants us to learn from life as we see things over and over again. Now Solomon turns a corner in the verse that we pick up with today, chapter 3 and verse 16. What he's going to deal with now is a series of challenges to God's plan. Not in the sense that by doing these things you can literally challenge God's plan and overturn it or change it. But in this sense he's going to list eight hard realities of life, hard realities of life that seem to go against the idea that God has a plan and he makes all things beautiful in his time. You see it's very possible for us to think after we've heard the first few verses of chapter 3 that the preacher, Solomon, is just got his head in the clouds. He doesn't understand how life really works. He doesn't understand the hardships and difficulties and tragedies and hard dates of life. What he's saying about everything being beautiful in its time sounds kind of pie in the sky by and by. It doesn't sound like real life to me. And so what Solomon is going to do is say I understand reality. I know the nasty side of life. I understand that. But does it mean that God has no plan and purpose in life? No. Does it mean that somehow God is goofed or forgotten something in his plan? No. But it does mean is that in the context of God's overall plan we need to look at the hard realities of life that are here because we live in a sin, cursed world. We need to look at those hard realities of life and respond properly to them within the context of the overall plan of God. We need to see them in that way. We need to experience them and live through them in that way. So that's what Solomon is going to talk about. So he will deal with eight hard realities of life in the next couple of chapters. Injustice, death, oppression, competition, isolation, fleeting popularity, empty religion and burdensome wealth. All of those which were very typical of his days, as well as hours, he will deal with. So today we look at two hard realities of life and how we should respond to them. We're going to take the first two of those eight and quickly summarize them. The first one is injustice. The fact that there is injustice in life at times, if you don't see it in the larger perspective of God's plan. The fact that there is injustice in life can sometimes cause us to think God hasn't factored this into his plan for sure. Well, let's see before we jump to that conclusion, look at verse 16 where Solomon describes the awfulness of injustice. He said, and I saw something else under the sun. The expression, as we've seen before in the book of the ecclesiastes, it clues us into the fact that Solomon is going to talk about things as they appear on this earth from an earthly perspective. Looking at things here, this is the way stuff appears. This is what we see. He's going to put it in a larger perspective in a few moments, taking eternity and God into perspective. But first of all, you'll describe just what we see here on this earth. What do we see? He says, in the place of judgment, wickedness was there, in the place of justice, wickedness was there. Notice the two words, the change in words there in verse 16, in the place of judgment, the word for judgment has to do with the way things are to be decided. Fair decisions, objective, just, fair decisions, in the place where those kind of decisions are supposed to be made, obviously talking about the legal system, the court system where justice is supposed, judgment is supposed to be true. He says, in that place, I saw wickedness, the Hebrew word for wickedness, here's a word which means to twist or to pervert. Where justice, where fair decisions are to be made, I see that being twisted or perverted or bent out of shape. Second word, justice has to do with people. It has to do with things that are decided, justice here has to do with things or people rather. You expect upright and just men to make those decisions that are supposed to be made in the legal system, but he says, I found also the same bending, twisting and perverting of just people in the system. The awfulness of injustice, and by the way, Solomon had plenty of opportunity to view this and observe this. He is naive to think that Solomon judged every case, although he was the king, it's very naive to think that he judged every case in every town in Israel. It's naive to think that he even judged every case in Jerusalem. There was a whole legal system that was involved in that, including many elders and even priests. So he had plenty of opportunity to observe injustice in the legal system, even in his own country, but also remember his wider audience, other countries. He's appealing to people since of injustice as they see what's happening in their own country. You see, there is injustice and there is still injustice all around us. What Solomon is saying is life is not like this neat little package that we hear in the fairy tales where they all live happily ever after. Life doesn't always work that way. And sometimes that's hard to see, especially as we get into adult years because we grow up on those fairy tales. And we've seen life always does work out. It always does end up with everything being good. And the bad guys always punished and the good people are always rewarded. And what Solomon is saying, sorry, but it doesn't always end that way. It doesn't always work that way. In fact, it doesn't really even always work that way in the fairy tales, does it? Remember all the Kingsmen, all the Kingshorses couldn't reassemble Humpty Dumpty? They failed in that past. You know, we experience a bit of sadness when we see that happen to Humpty Dumpty, but that's not really injustice. I mean, if one of the Kingsmen had pushed him off the wall, that's wrong. That's the injustice. But the guy should know better. He's an egg. His shape, he shouldn't be sitting up on a wall anyway. He should know better. We can kind of understand that and just feel a little bit of sadness about Humpty Dumpty. We even feel a little bit of sadness when Cinderella's coach turns back into a pumpkin at midnight. But what would really sting, what would really give us a sense of injustice is if the glass slipper actually fit the foot of the cool step-sister. Now, that would be wrong. The story wouldn't turn out right. And so you see, we have this inborn sense of injustice and a strong sense of justice should happen. We want to see good rewarded. We want to see offenders punished. I believe that is a reflection of the image of God in man. That we have this inborn sense of justice. And we don't like it when it's not done. When there's injustice, we rebel against that. We don't like injustice in the office. We don't like injustice in our children's classroom. We don't like injustice in local or state or federal politics. We don't like injustice personally when we have been slandered or misrepresented. I mean, even in little things, don't you find when this sense of justice is violated, you kind of rise up inside? You're where it occurs with me a lot of times is that a four-way stop sign. Seriously, you know, you pull up and you know the rules. You go in order of when you arrive at those signs and you let a guy that was there just before you go through it and the guy right behind it goes through too. It's not right. It's a violation of the rules. Now, I want you to know I don't do this, but I feel like doing it, laying on my horn and just glaring at them as they go by. Yeah, that's not right. That's in just or when someone breaks in line, you know, and you've waited in line like you're supposed to for your ticket, if the ticket counter and someone else just breaks in way up the front, that's not right. They're not following the rules. There is this inborn sense of justice that those who do the right things should be rewarded and those who do the wrong things should be punished. Again, I think it's a reflection of the image of God in us, but we certainly expect that in the legal system. I mean, there's other things that really minor irritations in life, but we certainly expect in the legal system that we will find justice and judgment. And when you find wickedness, it just doesn't seem right recently. Readers digest listed a series of lawsuits that have taken place in our country, things that actually make it into the courts and in many cases rewarded. A man illegally brought a gun into a bar, got injured in a fight, and then sued the bar for not searching him for a weapon. Listen to this one. Children who sued their mother for sending birthday cards without gifts in them. A woman disagreed with a store over an 80 cent refund and sued the store for $5 million. A convict sued a couple he had kidnapped for not helping him evade police. He sued them. A mother filed suit against an exclusive preschool over her child's college prospects. You take Tiger Parenting Gungo extremes there. A woman, here's one, a woman sued a theater over a movie trailer, which was showing a trailer of the movie drive and she sued the theater because she didn't think it was enough driving in the trailer for the movie drive. Here's a mom who sued Chuck E. Jesus arguing that the restaurants video games encourage gambling in children. He said, why do people, why are they thinking? Why do they even present such lawsuits? You know why? Because there is so much injustice in the system, so many things have been rewarded. I want to get my piece of the pie. I want to get my share of the loot. I mean, stories like that abound, a man who had a heart attack starting his mower and sued the company that made the mower for a million dollars in one. In Oregon, a woman sued Ford Motor Company for $1.5 million or her estate that her family did because she had hit a horse and the horse came through the windshield and ended up killing her. Her family sued the Ford Motor Company in one. $1.5 million in California, a drunk driver hit a telephone booth, this was a few years ago, hit a telephone booth and injured a man inside the telephone booth. The man survived, but the man inside the telephone booth sued the telephone booth company for the design, location, installation and maintenance of the telephone booth and won in court. So that's the reason. Yes, is the reason why people say I can get a piece of that money. You see, when we see that kind of thing, there's something inside us which just says that's wrong and that's what Solomon is saying. You see injustice and wickedness in the places where justice and judgment are supposed to be done. That's wrong. Well, what's the answer to injustice? How do you view that in the context of God's plan when you see that going on all around you? How do you live life as a believer as a Christian and cope with those injustices in life? The answer is in verse 17. I said to myself, God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed. That's the answer. The answer from a believer's perspective is yes, there will be injustice and wickedness even in the legal system on this side of heaven. God will make everything right in eternity. All of the injustices even personally done to you will be made right when we stand before God because God's judgment and we will all stand before Him in judgment. God's judgment is always just and righteous. There is no wickedness found in that place of justice, in that place of judgment. Now it doesn't always happen this side of the grave. It doesn't always happen this side of eternity. In the book of Job, Job has suffered terribly. He suffered the loss of just about everything, but most hurtful was the accusations of his friends, supposed friends, who accused him of all kinds of hidden wickedness or he wouldn't be judged so much by God. Finally, Job got to the point in chapter 19 where he just burst out with these words. Oh, that my words were recorded that they were written on a scroll that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead. In other words, so it would not be able to be erased or engraved in rock forever. Say, what he's going to say next, he wishes would be inscribed in a way that nobody would miss. This is the frustration of his soul coming out. He says, I know that my redeemer lives, redeemer, the Hebrew working also be translated advocate, my defense lawyer. I know that he lives. And that in the end, he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh, I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes. I, not another, how my heart yearns within me. Now that's often used just as a text for resurrection. And while it is, that's not the key thing in Job's mind. If you read the whole passage and put it in the context of the book, the key thing in Job's mind is someday you guys will get the right answer. I know I'm innocent. I know I haven't done the things. You've accused me of God, my redeemer, my advocate will stand some time on the earth and make things right. In Job's case, things were made right before the end of his life. But it doesn't always happen that way. The answer to injustice, however, is that there is a day when God will make all things right. God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed. That's the time when we stand before God. But then he brings up another hard reality of life and that is death. Death. In the next few verses, Job has often been accused, or Solomon rather, there's often been accused of writing as a pagan with a pessimistic view of life which does not believe in the afterlife. Look at the verses and you'll think, oh yeah, man, this is awful. What are you saying? We're saying, I also said to myself as for humans. God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Destroy the fate of human beings is like that of the animals. The same fate of ways come both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath. Humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaning us. All go to the same place. All come from dust and to dust all return. Let me suggest that what Solomon is really talking about here is the seeming. Remember, under the sun perspective, the seeming unfairness of death. He is often understood as speaking in despair with humanistic thinking that does not believe in the afterlife. But first of all, you have to understand that this is not a blanket comparison of animals and man. It is the under the sun perspective. What we can observe, and he'll use a word in verse 21 for knowledge which means to observe or perceive, it is what you see, what you perceive, what you observe happening in this world. And that is, the animals live, they breathe their last breath, they die, their body is silent. People live, they breathe their last breath, they die, and they cannot accomplish any more on this earth. Same thing happens to both. By the way, in the Old Testament, that is the prevalent perspective of death. It is not that there isn't a hope of the afterlife. There is, and we'll see in a moment, even Solomon knows that. But in the Old Testament, the main perspective on death was that life stops. You stop breathing and you cannot do any more in this life. And it is only in that sense that Solomon is saying, as we observe things, it appears that the same thing happens to people as happens to animals. We live, we breathe. We breathe our last breath, and we are no longer alive. Go to the dust. By the way, that perspective is described on man's death quite often in the Old Testament, not just with Solomon. Look at what God said in Genesis 3.19 when he created man after man had fallen, and the curse came upon him because of his sin, God told Adam, by the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground. He is from it. You were taken for dust you are and to dust you will return. Now if you read that verse without any context, you would think God is saying that man is just like the animals. He just goes back to the dust where he came from. Obviously, we know that's not the whole picture. Nor is that the whole picture in Solomon here in Ecclesiastes 3. By the way, let's look at another verse, Psalm 103, 14. And he knows how we are formed. He remembers that we are dust. Simply the fact that our body at some point will cease to function. That is an Old Testament perspective on death. Very prominent there. And that's really all Solomon is saying. The seeming unfairness of death is that death happens to animals and death happens to people. Both of them from all outward observances, all we can appear, all we can see is that everything happens the same way. You die and you are done. You no longer have any capacity to do anything else on this earth. In verse 19, the word for breath is also the word for spirit. When it says all have the same breath, but it's not talking about the soul or the spirit of man. It's just something that we all breathe. We all have the same breath. And I've these translated it very well. In this context, it simply means you stop breathing at some point. Do that. Mankind does that. By the way, in the Old Testament, death was very real and personal to them. There were no sophisticated machines to ease pain. There were no hospitals or nursing homes to remove death from our sight. Most of the time people died at home. They died as children and grandchildren were watching them. Death was very first hand to them. That perspective is what Solomon is addressing. In their culture, the way they lived, they saw people stop breathing and their body become motionless. I've seen that many times, most of you have at least some with family members. Where the body just stops breathing and is motionless. And just observing that, there appears to be the same thing happening there as there would be to an animal. The seeming unfairness of death. But what is the answer to death in verse 21 and 22? Solomon gives us a twofold answer very quickly. Verse 21, who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth. Again, that question makes it sound like Solomon doesn't believe in the afterlife. Who knows? Who knows if when you die, your spirit goes up and the animal spirit just goes into the ground. Who knows when your breath stops where you go? That's not really the thrust of what Solomon is saying, however. The word knows that he grew word for perceive or observe. What he's saying is, again, under the sun from an earthly perspective, as you watch death happen and they watch it every day, you can't tell the difference between a person and an animal dying. You can't. All you see is the last breath that goes out and the body ceases to function. Same thing happens with an animal that happens to a person in that way. Who knows? Now there are many who say, and I, one of those that would take this view, that that's not intended to be a question anyway. And there are reasons for that that I won't take the time to go into. But I think Solomon may well be saying, a statement, the human spirit rises upward and the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth. There is a hope for man. And the answer to death, first of all, is that recognize that death is not the end, that our spirit does live on. And by the way, Solomon cannot be questioning that as though he's an agnostic because several times in the book he makes it clear he does believe in the afterlife. He does believe that we will go to meet God. He's just said it in verse 17. God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked. There will be a time. Speaking of future time when we stand before God, there will be a time for judgment. Chapter 12, verse 7. Look at this. This is very conclusive. Chapter 12, verse 7. When he's describing how people age and then die, look at what he says in chapter 12, verse 7. This is a description of the death of a human being. And the dust returns to the ground that came from and the spirit returns to God who gave it. And then in verse 14 again, he mentions God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it's good or evil. Yes, Solomon knows there is an afterlife. Solomon knows that when a human being dies, yes, the body goes to dust, but the spirit goes back to the Lord who gave it. Solomon knows that. What Solomon is doing is the audience he is addressing. He's again finding common ground. What you observe, what you see is the seeming unfairness of death. Same thing happens to you that happens to an animal. But I want you to see that's not the case, Solomon says. Recognize death is not the end for you. The spirit will live on. You will go into eternity. So death is not the great equalizer of everything and every living being. The same thing doesn't happen to animals and people. Our spirit does live on. We do go to be with the Lord. And for that reason, verse 22, the second answer to death is to recognize that life does hold meaning. Because we will give account to God because we will stand before him because death is not the end because there is an eternity to live for. Then that brings a fresh new perspective on life here and now that we can recognize life does have meaning. That it's not meaningless. He says in verse 22, so I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work because that is there a lot for who can bring them to see what will happen after them. This is basically the same statement to end of chapter 2 with, into the first section of the book with. And it comes up over and over again in the book. Again, it's the marker. It is the key, the thread that ties the book together. It's this real theme. And that is that there is meaning and enjoyment and purpose to be found in life. None of us knows what will happen after us. None of us knows what will happen in the future. Only God knows that. And God has told us in His Word what will happen to us from an eternal perspective if you trusted Jesus as your Savior. When you die, your Spirit goes to be with Him. If you have not trusted Jesus as your Savior, God tells you in His Word that when you die, you will immediately find yourself in a place of judgment called hell. The Bible makes it clear what will happen to us after death. From an earthly perspective, an unsaid person has no idea. That's what Solomon's addressing. But God does tell us. And knowing what happens in eternity gives meaning to this life and gives the fact that we can enjoy this life, that we can enjoy the daily work that God gives us to do because He says that is there a lot. Key word. It means inheritance from God. It is literally their portion given to them by God. Whatever God has given us to do on a daily basis. That is our portion given to us by God. And God wants us to live it to the full and enjoy it thoroughly. Here's Solomon's point. Let me wrap it up this way. God does not want you spending your life brooding about injustice. It's great because of all the wrongs that have been done, either to you or others. Pesimistic because of the hardness of life and the reality of death which seems to end it all. God does not want you comparing your life with others, living to retaliate against those who wronged you, submerging yourself in a swamp of self-pity. God doesn't want that for you. God wants you to live every day understanding. He will take care of all those injustices in the future, in eternity. He will take care of all of that. And God wants you to live every day as a gift from Him to enjoy the labor that you've been given to do and just live life as it unfolds. Dwell on that. Who knows what impact that could have on other people if we as believers lived with that biblical philosophy of life. If you've never read or seen the movie about the story of Tom Sullivan, it's worth doing a little bit of investigating. Tom Sullivan is a motivational speaker still speaking on the circuit today. He's an actor. A movie was made about his life. If you could only see what I hear is the title of it. He was a world champion wrestler. Is in the college wrestling hall of fame. Was on the 1968 Olympic wrestling team. He has a degree in clinical psychology from Harvard University. He is a musician who has put out several recordings. He is an author who's written, I believe, 12 books. He is a sports enthusiast. He runs six miles a day on the beach. He swims. He skydives. He has 37 jumps to his credit. Oh, did I mention he's blind. You say, wait a second, skydives. Runs? Yeah. He runs marathons. Blind? Yeah. He has two or three people that run with him. They tell him where to turn and what is in front of him. And he runs marathons in a pretty decent pace. Fascinating man. In his motivational speeches, he always says something like this. Do you have a disadvantage? Take advantage of it. People buy differences, not similarities. When he was a kid, he wanted to play baseball. And he said a transistor radio up on a tree. And he got to where he took a stick and a rock. And he got to where he hit it well enough where he could hit that transistor radio. So his dad said, OK, we'll try playing baseball, but we're going to try it with a few neighborhood kids first. He said, what do you want to play? What does this you want to play? I want to play picture. Oh, yeah. That blind guy playing picture? Well, he did. He did. He hit a couple kids. And so they decided that wasn't the right position for him. Not enough to hurt anybody. So that's when he took up wrestling. And he tells the story in his speeches of the fact that oftentimes when he was wrestling in college, and he was great, but oftentimes, if you could realize, he's a pro-interpadiant in a bad position, he would pop out one of his glass eyes. That would freak the guy out. And then he would, of course, get another angle on him and get the hold. And that's one of the reasons he was so successful as a wrestler. You know what I love about that story? And something I can learn from it. I don't know if Tom Sullivan's a believer. I've never read anything that would indicate to me that he is. But there is a guy who had enough that went wrong with him in life that he could have curled up in a corner somewhere and just become bitter and cynical, but he didn't. He decided he would take life to the full as God gave it to him, and he would live it. He would not let cynicism, self-pity, and bitterness destroy the joy of living. Under God's good hand, with his wonderful provision, he has given us all life to live. Don't destroy it with the feeling of injustice or the seeming unfairness of death. Let us pray together. Father, thank you for your word, which time and time again calls us back to the right perspective on life. What life is all about? How you intend us to live it? Or do we all face injustice to some degree in some fashion? Do we all face death? And if we look at it strictly from an under-sun perspective, from a human perspective, it can seem final ending everything, taking away all of our chances in this life. What I thank you that death is not the end, that we will be with you someday, if we know Jesus. Help us to take the right perspective even in the midst of hard realities of life, to see life as your good plan as you give it to us. I pray, Father, for people who have listened to the word this morning, and some real adjustments in their thinking need to be made. And maybe mine too, Lord, you know my heart. Real adjustments need to be made about how to view life from your perspective. Live with a biblical worldview, a biblical perspective. Help us to make those changes in the way we see you, the way we see life, your given us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.