Well, we haven't been recording, so I'm going to start saying greetings right now. Again, very happy to see everybody and happy to have some guests today. Because of that, I am going to give a few minutes of review here. Just, and probably even if people are listening in on these and they're following one after the other, it's sometimes good to sort of catch up to where you've been.
But I don't want to spend a lot of time on that because it seems like sometimes when I give a review, I'm like 20 minutes in and then, okay, then it's back to where we are. So I'm going to try to run through that very quickly. Before I get into this, though, I want to say something. I was thinking about breaking from this series that I've been giving on this and giving something, quote, timely for the season.
But then I thought, well, wait a minute, this is very timely for the season. We're coming up on the Feast of Tabernacles, and this book was traditionally read at the Feast of Tabernacles. So it's good to go over this even more. And in fact, I thought, you know, the more I put it off, the longer it'll take to get through it. And I really would like to get through it sooner.
I did appreciate the note from Mr. Kubik that he's going to be speaking on this at the Feast. And of course, I'm sure he'll be giving a broad overview of the book and one sermon here to cover Ecclesiastes. And that's great, by the way. It's very good to go over the book in kind of one setting type of thing, you know, every once in a while to kind of look at the whole thing.
As a treatise and say, what's all being presented here? But this book is difficult in places. And in fact, he gave a quote on this, and I'm going to read the quote. I may work this quote into my introduction that he gave, if I can pull it up here. This was in his write up in the Ministerial Member Services newsletter, where he's given a preview of this sermon. He said, some commentators have called Ecclesiastes the strangest book of the Bible because Solomon's state of mind and attitude are in such an enigma.
Dr. Abraham Cohen writes in the preface to the well-respected Soncino commentary on Ecclesiastes as follows. Quote, it is the most difficult book in the Bible for the commentator. Its complexities and obscurities are so many and often baffling that the assumption of dogmatic certainty is unwise and unwarranted. And then he noted here that part of the difficulty lies in not comprehending the point of Ecclesiastes because the meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles, in which it is read, is not fully understood. And I agree with that because there's a looking forward to a better world that needs to be understood when you're reading this book.
That's part of it. It's a big part of it. But there's a lot more here, too. I would say a big part of the problem is this, that we can look at a lot of these overall themes and maybe those are quite a few. They're quite well understood to us. I mean, we've studied the rest of the Scriptures. We can see these themes that are here. But then we see all these statements that are made in the overall argument and we wonder, why did he say that here?
Why is this here? Why is this next? Here's a series of Proverbs. Why is this list of Proverbs crammed in here? How does this add to the argument that's being made? What is the point of these statements in context? And that's what we find as we read through the book, that there's a lot of statements that we don't understand their place in the book.
But they actually contribute very heavily to the overall argument of the treatise. So it's good that we not only look at a broad overview at times, but that we go through it very carefully verse by verse. I mean, this is true of the whole Bible, of course. We do that with Scripture in general. But it's particularly the case where you've got a book that is some of the individual passages are a little bit inscrutable, at least in terms of how they fit in what's being said in the chapter, in the section, as you go in through the book.
So that's part of the purpose of this. And of course, I'm trying to get this together for the Bible reading program. One day I may pare it all down, but it's just a matter of getting it out there and going through it as a study. We've never had a study like this, so I think this is quite helpful. You'll notice I gave you an outline. Some of you already have it, and then some of you are just now looking at it.
But this is from Dr. Walter Kaiser, Ecclesiastes Total Life, which is a very skinny book, but I think is a good basic commentary on the book of Ecclesiastes. There's a lot more that you'll find in other commentaries. But this, I think, gives a good outline of the book. And that's actually important, is understanding how it's structured. That's part of what's baffling about the book, is what's going on here. Why does it say what it does? And some things seem to be repeated, and some things seem to be off-topic.
But they all fit in this, I think, this outline that is given here. There are some major themes in the book that you'll find in the very first verse. It says, vanity of vanities, or vapor, the thinnest of vapors, as it were. All is vanity. Or frustration, I think, is a good way to understand that term. You can't grab hold of it. It's just frustrating. And this life is frustrating. And you'll see it all the way through. Vanity of vanities.
And grasping for the wind, as it's mentioned.
There's a frustration. You just can't apprehend it. You can't take hold of it. You can't get it. It's too hard to figure out what's all going on.
And there's another key to that, is that it's in this life under the sun. You'll see the statement, under the sun. Now, we think, well, we'll always be under the sun, in a sense.
Well, when it's talking about it in these terms, it's pointing out that we are confined here to this life on Earth, under the sun, in this temporary physical existence. You know, in the future, of course, the Earth will be our home.
But we won't be confined to the Earth. We will be able to be anywhere we want, really, in the spirit realm. I mean, we will have that kind of ability. But for right now, we are under the sun. We are on this planet. We are stuck here. We're not going anywhere else. Even if we go into outer space, we're still basically under the sun.
Because I don't think we're going to make it to other stars and so forth. But even if we did, I mean, the whole idea is that we are physical and limited. And God is in heaven, as it says. God is in heaven while we are under the sun. We are on Earth. And the key distinction in that is that we are separated from God right now. While God dwells up there and we are here, without Him dwelling with us, we are in these conditions. At a certain point, God is going to come down and dwell with us. And in fact, Jesus, as God, will come down and dwell through the millennium with us. And that's going to be a changed state, a changed world. It's going to be quite a different world at that time, so we look forward to it very much.
Another thing that we find through Ecclesiastes are these repeated refrains, these things that are mentioned over and over again, about enjoyment. Some people have this idea about Ecclesiastes. This is a very dour book that it's pessimistic and hopeless.
And that, well, and even some of these statements about, well, eat and drink and be merry, you know, because that's all you get.
But actually, these statements about eating and drinking and enjoying companionship, it says these are the gifts of God, and that we need to appreciate them, and the fruit of our labor, and we need to enjoy these things. It's, this is what God has given us for this time, is these things to enjoy. And as we talked about last time, it's not just about selfishness and just being focused on what you can get, because this has to do with companionship and enjoying each other's company. And also, it has to do with doing good as you're able, and trying to help people as you're able. But it's not talking about going and selling everything and living a life of philanthropy. That's actually not what God has in mind for all of us. You know, Jesus did give that one guy the instruction, go sell what you have, give the poor and follow me. But evidently, that guy had a problem that Jesus was trying to point out to him.
By telling him to do this and see if he would. And of course, if God gave us that challenge, we should do that. But in most cases, that's not what God has for us to do. He has for us to do is to live a normal life, and to help people as we encounter them and as we're able, and do just enjoy the time here. And of course, we talked about, you know, the relation to the Feast of Tabernacles. I mean, he wants us to go there every year to rejoice with our families and friends and other brethren, and we need to enjoy the things that he has given as gifts. And of course, what we found is that in these refrains is the point that not only is it a matter of the gifts God gives us as the things to enjoy, but the variability to enjoy them comes from God. The very fact that we can enjoy them comes from God. Because otherwise, there'd just be a bunch of stuff, and oh, we do fun, but why would it be fun? It's fun because God made us to have fun, and he also helps us as we're going about life to find enjoyment. Otherwise, it would be pretty dismal if we're separated from God. That's the sad fact of life. And finally, the overall theme of Ecclesiastes is actually found in its conclusion. This book is a book where we want to look at the end and see where it's leading. And for each section of the book, as we follow it, we want to look at the end of each section. What is it pointing to? And the end of Ecclesiastes is, fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man's all. That's the context that we enjoy things in. And without that, without seeking God's way of life, we're not going to really find that true enjoyment. We're not going to find happiness. Happiness is not something we can directly pursue. If you try to you go out there and try to be happy, that's what Solomon did. He went out there and tried to find happiness. That's not the way. You won't find happiness if you pursue. You know, we have in America the pursuit of happiness. Well, if we try to pursue it directly, we will not find happiness.
We need to pursue a relationship and a life with God and good things and doing and enjoying the things God has given. And then we can experience the happiness that he has for us. So these are these important themes to the book. So I'm going to look at, you know, here at the outline we've gone through, of course, in the first chapter, in the first section, it was talking about how the life's restlessness and he wanted the Solomon one. And by the way, Solomon here is called the preacher. Ecclesiastes is actually a translation of the Hebrew word koelet, which means a gatherer and probably in the sense of one who gathers an audience to address that audience as a preacher. So he's the preacher in the book and he talks about basically what he did, how he tried to test these pleasures and see if they would produce something. And they didn't.
And he wanted to see if he could figure out life's purposes and it seemed very inscrutable. There's just too much to understand what's going on. And then he got into the next section here, Roman numeral two on the outline, understanding the all-encompassing plan of God, which begins with this great poem of the times of life. There is a time and a season to every purpose under heaven. And he goes through, there's a time to do this and a time to do that. He goes through this whole list of things and he's talking about the fact that, you know, God has a plan that embraces every man and woman and all their actions at all times. And it says in verse 11 of chapter 3 that God has put eternity into their hearts except that they can't find out what he's doing from the beginning to the end. We want to know, but we can't. It's so big what God's doing. It's beyond us. So we have to trust God that he's working it out. That's what we come to find as we're going through the book. And then in chapters 3 and 4 here, there's these facts, these problems of life, isolation, oppression, bad things that happen that might lead us to question the idea that God is in control, that he's running the show, that he has a plan. It might seem random and terrible and that he doesn't really have a handle on it or really there is no God watching out for us. But that's not the answer. That's not the answer either. The answer is, again, we just have to trust that God knows what he's doing. And in this third section here of, I mean, the third sub-point under that second section is the implications. There are cautions and warnings given about how we need to approach God and understand what he's doing because if we don't get that right, we're going to actually make things worse. If we do not get it right in coming before God and doing what we should, we're going to make our lives much more miserable. And that point is here as well. But then we can, the conclusions of each of these, you see the first section conclusion, it's a case of the refrain about enjoying what God has given, enjoying these gifts. The same thing comes in chapter 5 verses 18 through 20. And let's look there real quick before we get into where we are now.
In chapter 5, we can see how the previous section included, here's what I've seen Solomon said, it is good and fitting for one to eat and drink and to enjoy the good of all his labor, which he toils under the sun, all the days of his life, which God gives him, for it is his heritage.
That is what God gives us for now. Let's appreciate what God has given us in that sense.
As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, in verse 19, and given him power to eat of it, you see that we notice both things. To eat of it means to enjoy it, to experience it, and to enjoy it. And so we're talking about the wealth, you know, God, you think, well, God's given wealth and so people should just give that wealth away. But that's not what he says. And given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor, this is the gift of God. So if God has given you wealth, he says you should enjoy what he's given you. And of course, in America, comparatively, we are all wealthy compared to the rest of the world in many respects. So we need to enjoy these gifts and be appreciative of them. That doesn't mean we don't help people as we're able. Of course we do. But if we gave everything away, I pointed this out before, if we gave everything away, we would actually become a burden to other people because they would need to help us. So that's not what we need to do. We need to actually help people as we're able to help them, but we need to focus on enjoying these gifts that God has given. Notice verse 20, for he will not dwell unduly or over much on the days of his life, you know, how fleeting and they go and how, you know, sad they might be, because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart. So God keeps, gives us joyful things to be focused on despite these problems that we find in life. You know, no matter about the bad things that we're going through, there's always something that we can rejoice in and be thankful about. And that is pretty awesome. You know, I was thinking about this at the hospital yesterday. Well, we're there with Ramona. She's going through a terrible thing, but she is finding joy in the Bible. I mean, actually in finding out things and learning and sharing, that's just tremendous. I mean, that's the greatest thing to find joy in, is learning and understanding what God reveals. But there's other things. She's still able to have some fun, too. And we do that as we're able, as God gives us the power to enjoy the gifts he's given. But then we'll get into chapter six now, moving into the current section. And you can see on the outline that this section is chapter six, verse one, all the way through chapter eight and verse 15. We won't get all the way through that. But this is about explaining and applying the plan of God. I just want to get into some of the commentary on this.
I titled this first section about Ecclesiastes 6, which is the first part of this.
Who knows what is good for man in life? That actually comes from verse 12 of chapter six. Who knows what is good for man in life? So we now arrive at the third section of Ecclesiastes, and this says Dr. Walter Kaiser in Ecclesiastes Total Life, his commentary, and the outline we've been following here. He says, it's the central portion of the whole argument.
Here Solomon will apply the two conclusions of the first two sections of his work about the gifts and plan of God to the alleged inequalities and the apparently unfair variations in divine providence.
As with the previous sections, this one also ends with an occurrence of the refrain, commending enjoyment in daily living. In fact, let's look over there. We can see how this section that we're in ends in chapter eight, verse 15. Solomon says, so I commended enjoyment, because a man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry, for this will remain with him in his labor all the days of his life which God gives him under the sun. So if we're wondering about this section and what it is pointing to, that's what it is pointing to. That's where it's going to lead us to that conclusion of this section, that again, there's a commendation of enjoying the life and the gifts God's given.
Now the first part of this section, which is found in chapter six, verse one through seven fifteen, chapter six, verse one through seven fifteen, and you see that on the outline, concerns a proper evaluation of man's circumstances. You know, what some possess, what they have, the haves you think of, and the difficulties that some must endure, should not lead us to think that God is not righteous or fair, and that he's unable to effectively deal with the human condition. We see this point, as Kaiser says, developed in two complementary arguments that form two subdivisions of six one through seven fifteen.
So the first part is chapter six, what we're looking at right now, chapter six verses one through twelve, prosperity is not always necessary or good. And number two, which we'll find in chapter seven verses one through fifteen, adversity or affliction is not always or necessarily evil.
So you think, good things happen, oh this is, you know, prosperity, that's great. No, it's not always great. And the horrible bad things that happen, that's not always the worst thing that can happen. Sometimes very good things are the worst thing that can happen, and sometimes bad things are the best thing that can happen. This is what we need to understand about life.
Let's look here at chapter six. We'll read through it. There's an evil which I've seen under the sun, and it's common among men. A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor, so he lacks nothing for himself of all he desires. Yet God does not give him power to eat of it, but a foreigner consumes it. This is vanity and an evil affliction. If a man begets a hundred children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with goodness, or indeed he has no burial, come back to this, because understanding this, I say that a stillborn child is better than he. For it comes in vanity and departs in darkness, and its name is covered with darkness. Though it has not seen the sun or known anything, this has more rest than that man. Even if he lives a thousand years twice, but has not seen goodness, do not all go to one place.
All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not satisfied. For what more has the wise man than the fool? And again, I'm in chapter 6, verse 8, for what more has the wise man than the fool? What does the poor man have? Who knows how to walk before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes and the wandering of desire. This also is vanity, frustration, and grasping for the wind. Whatever one is, he has been named already, for it is known that he is man, and he cannot contend with him who is mightier than he. Since there are many things that increase vanity, how is man the better? For who knows what is good for man in life? All the days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow. Who can tell a man what will happen after him? Who can tell a man what's going to happen? So what did we just read here? Again, there's so much information in this brief thing that we just read that we need to break it down and understand what we're actually talking about here. Solomon gets into this by returning to the wealth discussion of chapter 5. There he warned that riches could perish. That was in chapter 5 and verse 19. But now, in verses 1 through 2 here, you can look at them again.
He starts chapter 6 with reference to an evil affliction or calamitous plague, it could be, that he says is sadly common. A person given great wealth by God so as to have no lack, here with the addition of honor or fame, yet ultimately having no power to eat of it, that is to experience it or enjoy it, as it goes to a foreigner or stranger. So when it comes to wealth, all is not as it may seem. Solomon's father, David, had earlier stated, and I'll just reference Psalm 39.6, surely they busy themselves in vain, he heaps up riches and does not know who will gather them. You don't know what's going to happen to your money. Anything can happen. So that was again Psalm 39.6 from David. If the person here was denied enjoyment of prosperity while it lasted, then it would seem, you know, because maybe it wasn't stolen from him, maybe he still had it, but if he was denied prosperity even while he still had it, then it would seem there was a wrong focus here, that the person didn't get it. The expositor's Bible commentary notes on these verses without stringing the interpretation. It seems that 5.19, we just looked at that in 5.19, describes the person who accepts a standard of living for which he worked without continually craving for more. And the man in 6.2, what we're looking at now, is more concerned with having everything he wants, and his God-given status in life allows this, but inasmuch as his heart is centered on his accumulated wealth, his tragedy comes when God allows this wealth to be taken over by a stranger. So at some point, he does lose it, but that's a great tragedy. But there's more to this. Let's look at verses 3-6 here again. It says, So this shows how greater apparent success only magnifies the tragedy.
The new American commentary states on this, So the idea is that if you had that, you got it made. Here we see the exaggeration of the person having a hundred children and longevity of two thousand years, more than twice the length of time that the oldest patriarch, Methuselah, remember in 969 he lived, had lived. But despite the long life, it says in verse 3, This refers to the person's physical being, of course, his soul, including his consciousness, having no enjoyment or contentment in blessings. We understand it doesn't mean his supposed inner spiritual soul not being satisfied by doing good, as some would interpret this.
And the same will be in verse 7. Some people think, oh, he's not focused on his soul, he's not focused on his spiritual life enough, and that's why he's having these troubles. That's not really what this is exactly saying, because the soul is just his being here, is not receiving enjoyment or contentment in them.
We might wonder if the added statement, or indeed he has no burial.
Well, not having a proper burial was reviewed as a terrible dishonor. You might compare what happened to King Jehoiakim in Jeremiah 22, 18 through 19. He was not given a proper burial, and that was a great dishonor. The statement here could mean that despite the person having such a vast family, no one comes to bury or mourn him. That's possible. That would be awful. It would mean that on top of being joyless, he would also have been unloved, which could certainly go together. Yet a wealthy person having no funeral or burial seems unlikely, as arrangements for that would likely have been secured ahead of time. Indeed, wealthy people today have elaborate funerals, and that does not mean that they lived happy, joyful lives or that they were loved.
But maybe this is speaking of the wealthy person who loses everything in verse 2, and in that case it makes more sense that he might not have a funeral because he wasn't able to spend the money to provide for it if it was all gone. But it still seems unlikely in Israelite culture. They normally would still have some kind of funeral. Perhaps a better solution is that, the one that's given in the New American commentary, in quoting another commentator, it says that the line about burial is not predicated on the rich man, but is a proleptic or looking-ahead reference to the miscarriage, that is, the stillbirth that follows, so that the sentence would actually be broken down a little bit. You would look at it like this instead of saying the one who didn't receive the burial was this man, where it would say, but his soul is not satisfied with goodness, if this person's soul is not satisfied with goodness.
Indeed, even if it has no burial, I say a stillborn child is better than he, so that having no burial goes with the next thing that's mentioned, the stillborn child. That actually does make a lot of sense. In any case, Solomon says that the miscarried child, which comes and goes in obscurity, has not seen the sun or the light of day.
We find these kind of references elsewhere in Scripture, is better off than a person who has lived for ages without joy.
We recall earlier in Ecclesiastes 4.3 Solomon said it would have been better to have not been born than to see the evil oppression in this world. And of course he wrote this with understanding that there will be a future resurrection in which God and His way of life will permeate the world.
Likewise, when he speaks in 6-6 here, of all people going to one place, and that was defined back in chapter 3 verse 20 as returning to the dust of the earth, that's the one place everybody goes back to the ground, it is with understanding that the dead will one day rise again in a better world. Again, people think it's very hopeless, but this book acknowledges that there's a time to come. This isn't the end. In the meantime, as sad as a fleeting moment of life extinguished is, which is certainly very sad about the stillborn child, it's still, you know, even thousands of years of life with no joy is even worse.
It's worse than the situation of the stillborn child and how sad that is. The many years will come to an end at death, and what will there be to show for all that time?
Two thousand years somebody lives without joy? What is there to show for all that time?
So it says in the Kaiser said, although others may have looked on with envious eyes, and I want us to notice this too. Maybe we'd see a person in this situation who seems to have it all. Everybody looks on with envious eyes. The truth is that the extension of life is not what it appeared to be. It was a compounded sorrow. That's what it was. This great life that you thought it was so great. It was really just a compounded sorrow, and that is the great tragedy of it all. Solomon then gives a few proverbs to point out some important lessons. In verse 7, we read, all the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not satisfied. The mouth here directly represents both receiving sustenance, that's, you know, if you're hungry you get food, and tasting, or as the Amplified Bible brackets it, self-preservation and enjoyment. So you through the mouth, you sustain yourself, and you taste, you taste life, you experience things, you enjoy.
So both of those are in that metaphor of the mouth. And yet the soul, which is mentioned here, but it's the physical conscious person, we know that, it's not, again, the inner person only, is unfulfilled. Some take the problem here to be expending effort to satisfy one's material wants and desires without pursuing inner spiritual fulfillment. Yet the mouth here is probably meant to convey the full breadth of experience a person might take in to live and find happiness, including thinking, mental endeavor, things of your mind. So whatever you take in, you know, through your senses in that sense. The point seems to be that, again, if we pursue fulfillment directly by whatever means, we will never be fulfilled. If we're just chasing a dream, we're just pursuing something that we're not going to receive. Happiness is a byproduct of another pursuit. The meaning of verse 8 here is a matter of dispute. The Tyndale commentary notes that expositors differ widely on this verse. Yet with consideration to the various arguments, we may deduce the likely meaning here. While the verse's proverb is distinct from that in verse 7, the 4, as you see at the beginning of verse 8, shows that it should be read in the context of verse 7, as does the meaning of verse 9, which ties back to verse 7. We'll see that in a minute. These all must go together, these three verses here. Verse 8 begins, For what more has the wise man than the fool? The context from verse 7 is that of the effort made to supply one's needs and desires in trying to find fulfillment. Those who are wise, skilled, actually the Hebrew word hakam means skilled for wise, skilled and educated in how to go about this and how to find fulfillment, will succeed more in meeting needs and wants than fools who make terrible life choices. If they know how to live, they're going to succeed better in certain aspects of life. But if that's the only difference, then they both end up in the same situation of being unfulfilled. One just lives life a little better. It doesn't make as many errors, but he's still not really getting it.
The latter part of verse 8 then asks, as the New King James renders it, What does the poor man have who knows how to walk before the living? The last phrase here seems to denote those who know how to conduct themselves as needed among others. This appears to parallel the wisdom at the beginning of the verse, so that the second question is probably a more specific rephrasing of the first question. That's how Hebrew thought rhyming works. In Hebrew poetry, you've got thought rhyming where something is repeated in different words or different thoughts. There's evidently recognition here of the problems that wealth can bring, including trying to maintain and increase that wealth. So now we're presented with a poor man, which, you know, would relatively speaking represent most people, especially from Solomon's perspective. He's talking about the poor man. It's like everybody, basically. This is the common man who is doing what it takes to continue obtaining, even if that is only to just get by, to be happy. But what is this person actually left with?
This person, this common person who's just going about their... they know how to live, they know how to act and present themselves to get by, to earn a living, whatever they need to do. But what are they really left with? Perhaps the latter part of the verse should be understood to mean, what does the person of modest means, who knows how to conduct himself in pursuing needs and wants, ultimately have more than the fool who does not know or choose to so conduct himself?
Again, if that is the only difference, really nothing is different, as neither will be left fulfilled. So verse 9 here, let's look at it, "'Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind.' That caps off the vanity here, the futility and frustrated grasping at wind, of this constant pursuit of more to satisfy longing, giving us another, a better than proverb." That's a common poetic form. This is better than this, and this is better than this. You'll see that in the Proverbs. In this case, the sight of the eyes is declared to be better than the wandering of desire. The sight of the eyes here must mean what is right before you, that you already have, rather than what you see elsewhere, or that someone else has, because the latter part covers that, the wandering of desire. The wandering of desire is what you see that others have, or is over there, that you want. So the sight of the eyes must be what you see right in front of you, what you have before you is better than going after something else. And recall the related warning in Proverbs 27, verse 20, which says, hell, or the grave, and destruction, are never full.
So the eyes of man are never satisfied. Covetousness leads to more covetousness, and ultimately destruction, and that is definitely not the way to happiness.
Now, in a note on Ecclesiastes 6, verses 10 through 12, the next few verses here, the new American commentary says, this text is held together by the fourfold use of the catchword Adam, Adam, actually, for man here. Here used not merely as a generic for human beings, but as a term that points back to Genesis 2 through 3. It's very interesting. Verse 10 of Ecclesiastes 6 says that whatever one is, he has been named already, for it is known that he is man, or that he is Adam, and he cannot contend with him who is mightier than he. This is not speaking of each person being named individually in advance, because it might look like that. Rather, it refers to all being originally given the collective name of man, or specifically Adam, a name related to Adama, meaning red earth, or soil from which the first man was formed. This goes to the very heart of the human condition. That's what we're talking about in Ecclesiastes. This is solid ground here, what we're talking about. Man is of the earth, and of himself cannot truly rise above.
In fact, he will ultimately return to the earth, as has already been stated in this book. So that the name, as the New American commentary here says, draws attention to human mortality, that he's already been named as this earth. That's what he is.
Consider further the fact here of being named or identified. Adam, remember the original Adam, received dominion over the other creatures of the earth, which was symbolized the fact that he named them. God told him to name them. That showed his dominion over them. But he didn't name himself.
Adam was named by God, showing God's superiority and making it clear that he is the one who man cannot contend with, as it says here at the end of verse 10, who is mightier than he. That is God.
God's judgment and rule over life stands. People cannot contend with God in the sense of taking into court to debate his supposed lack of fairness. Job, remember, desired to do this.
But ultimately, he withdrew his case, recognizing God's care and righteousness and his own lowliness and sin. Continuing with God might also refer to some trying to change the universe, to make it work how they think it should. And that is obviously not going to happen. The world is the way it is. Arguing against God or trying to change things only increases vanity and frustration.
How are man's circumstances thereby better? As verse 11 asks. How would you make things better that way? So then verse 12 asks two questions. Let's look at these again. The first one is asking here, who knows what is really good for man in life all through the course of frustrating and fleeting life? Who knows? And the second question, who can tell a man what will happen afterward with him in this life under the sun? The rendering that some have of after he's gone actually seems incorrect. That appears irrelevant. It doesn't have to do with after he's gone. It just means to happen after. What's going to happen after whatever is going on now?
Maybe even in your life. Of course, none of us can do either of these things.
The answer to both questions here is God and only God. Only God knows what is really good. Because, you know, he knows how it all fits. Only he knows what's going to happen. Only God knows that. Looking back to the chapter, we can see how this applies. With the issue of wealth at the outset we saw at the beginning, we might think of all that we want. We think of all the things we want. We imagine that it's good to be really prosperous. But what do we know? We don't know.
It's revealed here that wealth can end up an effective curse.
In verse 2, we see that the more one has, the more one has to lose. And here it is lost.
Is even that necessarily a bad thing? It's a calamitous affliction, as it's described to be.
But maybe it actually saves the person from becoming worse, like the utterly joyless person described in the verses that follow. Maybe it's good that that happened to that person, is what I'm saying here. And certainly the lesson is beneficial to others. The fact is, only God can say whether various circumstances in life are ultimately good or bad, as only he understands their full context and impact. And what will yet happen? Coming to accept this is to embrace the life of faith. Trusting in God's sovereign direction and plan, even though we don't understand all the things he brings about or allows to happen in life. We were having this discussion yesterday at the hospital. This is, you know, again, Ramona had asked, you know, why would God allow this? We don't know all the reasons God allows us, but God knows and gets a good reason, I'm sure. And we can trust that. We just, that's what we have to learn, to learn to roll with this, to trust it, to know that God knows what he's doing. We don't stop crying out to him. Oh, we're just fine. We let him know how we feel, but we have to learn to trust that he is taking care of things. The preaching the word commentary says about the calamitous loss at the beginning of the chapter, and it really sums up all that we've seen here. This is a quote, if anything good can come from this unfortunate situation that that person who lost their wealth at the beginning, it is the recognition that our possessions, like other pursuits of fulfillment, can never bring us lasting joy. The gifts that God gives us and the power to enjoy those gifts come separately. This is why having more money can never guarantee that we will find any enjoyment. Without God, we will still be discontented.
It is only when we keep him at the center of our existence that we experience real joy and the gifts that God may give. The fear of the Lord is not just the beginning of knowledge, it is also the source of satisfaction. Isn't that remarkable? Again, true happiness is not a result of directly pursuing happiness, but of pursuing a right relationship with God through Christ.
I think I will end with that. I don't want to rush verses 1 through 15. We think, well, there's only 15 verses here in this section, but there's a lot packed into these verses. Again, it's amazing going through this story and this treatise, what we find and how this argument is presented. If we will just slow down and take a look at these statements, it is so deeply profound and humbling. That is, of course, what God expects. He wants us to be deeply humbled by these truths and to learn to trust him that he knows what's going on, even though we don't. I will give you a preview of it, though. I want you to look at the end of this section really quickly before I close, and we'll get to it in more depth next time. It's in chapter 7, and it's actually in verses 13 and 14. That's the end of this little mini-section that we're in, and I want to point to the end of what we've been reading. We'll get to this the next time. But the point is made here, consider the work of God. There's a number of bad things that are mentioned and how sometimes mourning is better than laughing. We'll get to that here in the next part. But it says, consider the work of God, for who can make straight what he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity, be joyful. By the way, that's the refrain again in a tiny version. In the day of prosperity, be joyful. Rejoice in your prosperity. Okay, that's what we're told. But here's the context. But in the day of adversity, consider, surely God has appointed the one as well as the other, so that man can find out nothing that will come after. In other words, we don't know what's going to happen. But God is in charge. He's appointed good things. He's appointed some bad things.
We need to just accept that he knows what is best for all of us. He knows what's best for all of mankind. Ultimately, he knows what's best for our individual lives. And he's able to work these things out. It's a matter of living the life of faith. And we'll continue this at some point, probably after the feast. But I certainly would recommend you going through all of the Ecclesiastes and appreciating the message that we receive at the feast about this amazing book. And there'll be more to come.
