Category: Devotional Grist

We have seen so far, in our work through Ecclesiastes, that the issue at hand is the issue of meaning.

1:1, 1:14, 1:17, 2:11, 2:15, 2:17, 2:23, 3:9, 3:19 12:8

Where does one find meaning?

As we’ve looked at Ecclesiastes we have tried to advance the idea that this search for meaning is taken up by the Preacher as one speaking alternately with the voice of the Covenant breaker and with the voice of the covenant keeper — though the preponderance of the speaking is with the voice of the covenant breaker. This accounts for the meaninglessness that often surrounds his conclusions. Meaninglessness is found because he is giving us the perspective of life from the position of the man who lives apart from God.

One reason we have advanced this idea is because, as we have noted, there are times periodically in the book when the gloom lifts and we see that life does have meaning. At those times we have suggested that the Preacher reverts to speaking in the voice of a Covenant keeper. He reverts to one who lives life in light of the God who alone can give meaning. Such examples that we have come across thus far are found in,

2:24-26, 3

And so the book of Ecclesiastes is about the search for meaning. But the search is conducted in such a way that meaning is seen to be impossible apart from the Covenant God who has revealed Himself in the Scripture. As we said the book forms a kind of negative apologetic as it repeatedly shuts the door of finding meaning apart from God. It does this with the purpose, I believe, of revealing that meaning can be had but only by presupposing and serving God.

Christ and Ecclesiastes

In our series thus far we have also tried to advance the truth that with the coming of Christ meaning can only be found in Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). If the Old Covenant Preacher could speak of finding meaning because of the reality of the covenant God, how much more so is this the case when the fulfillment of the ages has come in Christ who Scripture explicitly teaches is our “Wisdom from God” (I Cor. 1:31).

We have tried to emphasize that in and because of Redemption we are set on the sanctificational path of epistemological self consciousness. This is merely to say that we become, by God’s grace alone, increasingly wise and self aware that we need to look to Christ in order to find and have ongoing Wisdom / Meaning. This idea of being epistemologically self conscious is merely to say that because Christ is the Truth, and we are rightly related to Christ by being united to Christ, we become carriers of the truth / wisdom / meaning virus.

This is what is implored in all of Scripture

Proverbs 3:13 Blessed is the one who finds wisdom,
and the one who gets understanding,
14 for the gain from her is better than gain from silver
and her profit better than gold.

Proverbs 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding.

What else is behind the call in Corinthians to “take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ” save this idea of understanding that wisdom / truth / meaning can only be had in relation to Christ?

James tells us that God dispenses wisdom to those who ask. Elsewhere we are told that we are to have this mind in us that was also in Christ Jesus. The mind that was in Christ Jesus is the mind of wisdom / meaning / understanding.

As Christians our minds are to be renewed (Romans 12) that we may prove what is the good, and acceptable and perfect will of God. How else can we do that except by being able to locate meaning?

All this to say, that what we are looking at in Ecclesiastes, in terms of this issue of meaning is not unrelated to the work of Christ for His people. Christ has Redeemed us to the end that we might be meaning identifiers. We see the spin of this World and because we are in Him who is Wisdom we see what the enemy is trying to do with the spin and we see the real reality behind the spin. We are not the foolish virgins. We are the wise virgins who keep their epistemological lamps trimmed.

All of that said in order for us to see the Macro issues regarding meaning. Yes, we are in Ecclesiastes but the issue of meaning as found in Ecclesiastes relates to Christ and who we are in Christ.

This then takes us to the issue of Evangelism. Men today are much like the Covenant breakers that we hear in the voice of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes. They are men who are given over to finding meaning apart from Christ.
This idea of the search for meaning has not been unique to the ancient book of Ecclesiastes

In our own time

Queen — Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters to me

Kansas — Dust in the Wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind

Same old song
Just a drop of water in a endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see

Finding meaningful meaning apart from Christ can’t be done. Some will spend years — even decades — trying to find meaning apart from Christ. The elect among them will come to the realization that one can’t discover truth apart from Christ of Scripture who is the embodiment of Truth. To these people we must hold out Christ as not only the one who can save their souls (and their souls need saving) but also as the one in whom they can find meaning.

Let us pause to consider here that what we are speaking of has significant implications. We are not only talking about individuals being Redeemed to find truth / meaning in life, though that is absolutely foundational. We are also talking about civilizational impact. Should enough men and women, in any given culture, bow to Christ, who is God’s Wisdom, that culture and civilization is renewed also unto abundant life. There is a decrease in the patterns of the culture of death. There is an increase in interpersonal harmony in family, workplace, and Church. As men bow to Christ and find meaning there is a return to pursuit of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

Ecclesiastes and Civilization

As we turn to Ecclesiastes 3:16 – 5:7 we have to do with the relation of the legal / moral order to the matter of meaning. Man tries to set up justice and what he finds instead is wickedness and iniquity (3:16). The covenant breaker has these huge aspirations for a “just social order,” but as he seeks to implement that order apart from the God of the Bible while dependent on his how autonomous law word — a autonomous law word that is riddled with sin — all that can come about is wickedness and iniquity where there was supposed to finally be justice and righteousness.

I am reminded of the various Communist Revolutions which always promised justice in place of the systems they were overthrowing. I cite a couple of their versions of legal order justice to make the Preacher’s point about

In the place of justice
Wickedness was there
And in the place of Righteousness
Iniquity was there

After the Revolution was in place — this Revolution to overthrow the Bourgeoisie law order — there was issued a edict

“There is no such thing as a woman being violated by a man; he who says that a violation is wrong denies the October Communist Revolution. To defend a violated woman is to reveal oneself as a bourgeois and a partisan of private property.”

And another …

“By virtue of this present decree … all woman become the property of the nation…. The distribution and maintenance of nationalized women, in conformity with the decisions of responsible organizations, are the prerogative of the group of Saralof anarchists … All women thus put at the disposition of the nation must, within three days after the publication of the present decree, present themselves in person at the address indicated and provide all necessary information … Any man who wishes to make use of nationalized woman must hold a certificate issued by the administrative council of a professional union, or by the Soviet of workers, soldiers, or peasants, attesting that he belongs to the working class.”

Men apart from God, whether in the times of the preacher or in the 20th century find little if any justice or righteousness in their legal – moral orders erected apart from God and His Christ. Man apart from God is forever crying out for social justice, and fairness, but when he gains the whip hand what he institutes is oppression and social injustice.

So here again, in 3:16-17 we see the negative apologetic of the Preacher at work. Speaking in the voice of the Covenant breaker he speaks of the attempt to set up justice and righteousness but instead what is found is wickedness and iniquity.

Ecclesiastes & Judgment

In vs. 17 we hear the voice of the Covenant keeper again. Yes, times of injustice masking as justice arise but in the end God will judge the righteous and the wicked.

17 I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. (cmp. vs. 15)

Man may think he gets away with injustice and wickedness where God requires justice and right judgments but there is a time when these matters will be set straight.

(By the way, the mentioning of “For there is a time,” with reference to God’s judgment in vs. 17, indicates that 3:1-9 is indeed dealing with God’s times and not man’s times.)

Comparison Between Men & Animals

In vs. 18 we continue to hear the voice of the Preacher as covenant keeper. God is testing men who are outside the covenant. Here you have these men setting up these legal orders and moral orders in order to have “justice” apart from God and what transpires is wickedness and iniquity. God is testing them that they may see that justice apart from God turns men into animals. The Preacher is not saying here that men and animals have are qualitatively the same. He is merely noting that man apart from God are LIKE animals.

And the 20th century has provided for us all the empirical evidence we need to see that man’s inhumanity to man can be just as red in tooth and claw as the Animal Kingdom.

1915 – 1918 — Turkish Armenian genocide — 1.5 million
Turks slaughter Armenians

1932 – 1933 — Soviet Ukrainian Political famine (Holdomar) — 7 million
Communists slaughter Christian Ukrainians

1932 – 1939 — Soviet White Russian Purge — 11 million

Communist Russians exterminated non Communist Russians. The tales are gruesome.

1937 – 1938 — Japanese Rape of Nanking — 300,000 killed

1938 – 1945 — Nazi Holocaust with accounts of the death total anywhere from 4-6 million Jews. Slavs and Gypsies

1944 – 1953 — Soviet Gulag Archipelago — 29 million killed

1949 – 1957 — Maoist Counter Revolution Repression — 3 million Chinese killed by the Chinese Gov.

1958 – 1961 — Mao’s great leap forward — 38 million

1966 – 1976 — Mao’s cultural Revolution — 3 million more

1949 – 1976 – Maoist Laogai camps — 27 million

1975 – 1979 — Khmer Rouge — 2 million

Abortuaries in US since 1973 — 60 million

When we talk about the dangers of man forgetting God … when we talk about the possible eclipse of muscular Biblical Christianity these are the truths and realities we are talking about. When man forgets God man becomes like an animal, and like the animal creates a “red in tooth and claw” world.

So, the Preacher is not saying here that man and animals are the same. He is merely speaking of how the covenant keeper becomes animal like in his behavior apart from God. There is another similarity between men and beasts and that is they all die. When the preacher says that man has no advantage over the animals and that all go to one place, and that they are all dust, the point of commonality is that both man and beast perish. Who can deny that? The point may be that for all his strutting in setting up legal and moral orders, man like the beast dies.

So the similarity is that they are both mortal. However there is dissimilarity mentioned in the following verses.

“This verse is not a continuation of the thought of the preceding verses. They have shown in how far man and beast are alike. Now there comes a statement in how far they differ.” (H. C. Leupold)

21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?

The Preacher will re-affirm this in 12:7

7 then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

vs. 21 returns us to the idea captured in vs. 17. Man, once dead, will be judged by God as his spirit returns to God.

H. C. Leupold has accurately rendered its thought:

“There are not many who take to heart as they ought to the fact that the spirit of man goeth upward, and that the spirit of the beast goeth downward to the earth.”

Michael Kelley makes a connection regarding the Teacher’s observation that the Spirit of man goeth upward,

“The covenant people especially must be reminded that God will bring every activity of man into judgment, for it is the Preacher’s way of saying, as Hebrews 9:27, “Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment….”

However we must note that for those in Christ, the eschatological judgment of the end time has already fallen on them in Christ. Christ received our judgment and so we have no fear of condemnation (penalty after judgment). Should there remain any further final judgment upon those in Christ it is a judgment that will vindicate their vindication in Christ Jesus. Their judged works, likewise being imputed with the righteousness of Christ, will be testimony to their completely gracious salvation.

In vs. 22 the Preacher continues with his Covenant keeper voice,

v. 22— “…there is nothing better for a [covenant] man to do than to enjoy his work….”

If we connect the work he is to enjoy with the context we might conclude that he is to enjoy his work of establishing God’s righteousness in the legal – moral order. However, the enjoyment of our work — an enjoyment that defies the despair of the covenant breaker (16) — can only come in the context of covenant keeping.

Rejoicing in his own work seems to be the cure for a angst about the future. Man, the covenant keeper, also has eternity set in his heart but the work he can do can only be for his generation. He cannot see what will happen after him. So, covenant keeping man rejoices in his own work and doesn’t let the unknown future dissipate his current joy.

The Teacher searches for meaning but he realizes in Chapter 3 that his search for meaning is a search that is conditioned by God’s sovereignty over the affairs of men. Man is a limited being and his search for meaning comes in the context of understanding that God has set the times and seasons.

3:1 picks up where 2:24-26 leaves off. In 2:24 The Teacher admits that his eating and drinking and enjoying his labor is from the hand of God. In 3:1 he expands that thought so as to communicate that all of our living comes from the hand of God as God has designated times and seasons under the sun for His purposes. As pure enjoyment stands not in the power of man, much rather is a gift of God (2:24). God bestows or denies man according to God’s will, so in general all happens when and how God wills, according to His own ordained plan comprehending all things which man can neither completely understand nor in any respect change. God does this so that man should sense his dependence upon God and learn to fear God.

To often 3:1-8 has been taught as a text that communicates our needing to order our own lives according to what we determine are proper times. Also it has been taught that we have to determine when the proper times are ourselves. Before my study of this passage I was guilty of this misreading. Indeed, in the notes of my Bible I have inscribed,

“Our prayer should be that God would give us wisdom to be able to discern the appropriate times.”

But 3:1-8 is not about us. These are not prescriptions but descriptions of God’s work. To read the text as if this is a list of prescriptions is to miss the whole thrust of what the Teacher is conveying. The Teacher is communicating that there is one who has ordered the Universe in such a way that all that comes to us as covenant keepers can have meaning. It is not a totally random world where we are the ones imposing meaning on the world. The world comes with ordered meaning because God has given everything a season and all times a purpose.

We can take great encouragement from this. There is a structured order to the life of man, even when it involves
sickness (3), death (2), and war (8); for, in spite of the curse, God does not permit the world, and man’s life in it, to fall into complete chaos. He makes sure there are times for birth (2), health (3) and peace (8) as well.

So while man is to learn from this and order his days aright because of this description of God’s ordering the Teachers primary purpose is to emphasize the perspective of the God Who “orders” every single aspect of man’s life and actions.

I submit to you that the fact that 3:1-8 is not about us — about our needing to order our own lives according to what we determine are proper times is seen in vs.2.

“A time to born … a time to die.”

All would agree that none of us determine the time of our birth, and I would contend that not even the person who commits suicide and rushes into God’s presence un-summoned determines the time of their death.

Vs. 1 then makes it clear that what is said in vs. 1-8 is not about our necessity to figure out when we need to do one thing or another but is about how God ordains all things.

So in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 we find words which covenant-keeping man may read for understanding and encouragement, while covenant-rejecting man in his state of alienation from God is estranged from their meaning.

“… To every purpose under the sun”

The purpose here being spoken of is not man’s purpose but God’s purpose. God marries times and seasons to His purposes and the Teacher recalls here that God is the one who has ordained the times and seasons to accomplish His purposes.

Man has very little control over the comings and goings of God’s seasons. From verses 2-8 we have God’s time stamp; indicating His times of change, of direction, of progress, and no man can touch the clock on whose minute and hour hand these times are marked.

Covenant keeping man finds these words comforting because it reminds us that our times are in God’s hands. These words remind us that there is rhythm and meaning to life because God is the one who is purposing the times under heaven. Life is not coming to us by time plus chance plus circumstance and life is not spinning out of control when our purposing under heaven does not come to fruition.

The Teacher saw that, notwithstanding the vanity which so broadly marked all human life, there was a partially discovered method underlying everything. Things that seemed to come by chance really came by arrangement, and all the irregularity of life was only on the outside. Considered from a macro point of view all of life comes to us by the hand of God who is the one who regulates all of our times. The covenant keeper finds his sense of equilibrium and stability in this truth in the seasons that we mark off as adversity.

However, Covenant rejecting man finds these words exasperating and hateful to his desired sovereignty. These words stand as a rebuke to men who would be as God, — men who would structure all reality according to their fiat word. These words are hateful to the covenant rejecter because they remind him that they live in a world that is conditioned and controlled by God. Their times are not in their own hands but remain in God’s hands.

In these words the teacher provides comfort for the covenant keeper but at the same time these words are a javelin slung at the heart of the Idolatrous worldview of the covenant rejecter. He must live his life in submission to God’s ordering.

Still, the covenant rejecter as always tried to ascend to the most high in this matter of controlling the times.

Rushdoony reminds us,

“In ancient paganism…humanistic man sought to govern time by means of rites whose purpose was to control time and nature. In fertility and chaos cults, men believed that they could make nature fruitful again, wipe out past history and sins, reverse time and order, and regenerate themselves, nature, and history.”

That this remains a goal of modern covenant rejecting man is seen in Aldous Huxley’s novel, “Brave New World,” where man seeks to take up God’s predestinating purposes in regard to running the world. Huxley reveals to us that man wants to be the one who determines the “time to be born.”

“The Director of the Centre (the D.H.C.) conducts a group of new students, as well as the reader, on a tour of the facility and its operations — a biological version of the assembly line, with test-tube births as the product. They begin at the Fertilizing Room, move on to the Bottling Room, the Social Predestination Room, and the Decanting Room. Along the way, the D.H.C. explains the basic operation of the plant — Bokanovsky’s Process — in which one fertilized egg produces from 8 to 96 “buds” that will grow into identical human beings.

The conditioning that goes along with this process aims to make the people accept and even like their “inescapable social destiny.”

The Social Engineering done today by way of science and politics is just another example of covenant rejecting man seeking to throw off the reality that God is the one who has given everything a season and God is the one who has given a time for His every purpose under the Sun.

As we consider the list in 1-8 we would do well to remember that these are not listed from a moral point of view. The vantage point that is taken up is of the God who disposes all things and who can take even the adversity that He ordains and makes it subservient to his plan.

1-8 also reminds us that as there are God ordained times so there are fitting human reaction to those times. God has made us in such a way that no one emotion is in and of itself evil.

God has made the time to weep, and the time to laugh. He has made the time to mourn and the time to dance. He has made the time to embrace and the time to be aloof. The time to speak and the time to remain silent. The time to love and yes even the time to hate. No human feeling is in and of itself wrong. The error lies not in the emotion but in the marriage of the wrong emotion to the wrong time that God has ordained.

Ill. — Nietzsche’s lie that Christianity is a killjoy religion is a demonstrable falsehood because God gives times to laugh.

In vs. 9 we see a repeated idea from back in Chapter 1:3 where the search was to find meaning in work. 3:10 returns to the theme of 1:3 — The Burden of God and points mnen to God’s covenant faithfulness with a reference back to God’s doing in God’s time (vs. 10). So, the profit that a worker does or does not have from his labor as part of the God given task that God has given can be anchored in the reality that God has made everything beautiful in its time. God has made it beautiful in its time. However, if we cannot find the satisfying good in the events and affairs of life, that is because God has put eternity in our hearts. (vs. 11)

This idea of eternity in our hearts is the Teacher reminding us that God has placed in each one of us a impulse that leads us beyond the temporal to the eternal; it lies in our nature not to be contented with the temporal, but to break through the limits which it draws around us, to escape from the bondage and the disquietude within which we are held, and amid the ceaseless changes of time to console himself by directing his thoughts to eternity.

The idea of eternity in our hearts reveals that for men created as the Image of God that which is temporal cannot satisfy. We are made for something higher and grander than the temporal, though having a place, cannot ultimately satisfy what we thirst for. We are beings limited by time but in our innermost nature we were made for eternity. That which is temporal has just enough of the eternal in it to cause us to sigh for the eternal which will remind us of the Temporal.

So, everything is beautiful and appropriate in its season from birth to death, from war to peace (11). If we cannot find the satisfying Good in the events and affairs of life, that is not because we could devise a happier order for those events (though we often think we could) but it is because God hath put “Eternity in our hearts,” as well as time, and did not intend that we should be satisfied until we attain an eternal good.

The fact that we are time bound is emphasized again in 11b. We are creatures that are created in time. We can not get out of our time to know what God has done from beginning to end. We want to know. We are like people who are in a long play. We have our part and we think we know where the play is going but the curtain falls on our part before we can see all that God as the producer and director of the play is doing.

So, while we can’t know God’s beginning to end, we are called to rejoice and do good in our lives. We can not control the times. That is God’s doing. But we can enjoy the times that God gives and do good. We can live our lives then in light of eternity. This is what we are called to do throughout Scripture. Since our times are in God’s hands (Ps. 31:15) we are to bless the Lord at all times Ps. 34:1.

And in terms of the doing good … well, as we say repeatedly that is found in God’s law,

David could say,

“My soul is consumed with longing for your law at all times.” (Ps. 119:20)

“Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly [i.e., at all times] do what is
right.” (Ps. 106:3)

With this in mind Paul writes, “Be careful, then, how you live —not
as unwise – but as wise, making the most of every opportunity [i.e., redeeming the time]….” (Eph. 5:15)

In 14-16 the teacher makes some concluding remarks for this section.

Implicit contrast between God and Man — vs. 14
One purpose of God’s doing — vs. 14 (Fear God)
Nothing new under the sun — vs. 15 (cmp. 1:9)
God will judge

The covenant keeper has been judged in Christ.

The name of God occurs in Ecclesiastes no fewer than 37 times and that in such a way that the naming of Him is at the same time the confession of Him as the True God, the one who is Exalted above the world, the Governor and the Ruler over all. And so while the Teacher in Ecclesiastes draws out the vanity of searching for meaning apart from God, he constantly returns to the idea that “Fearing God” is the beginning place where meaninglessness (vanity) might become meaning.

Ecclesiastes places the command “Fear Thou God” (5:6-7, 12:13) in the foremost rank as a fundamental moral duty. Fearing God is central to happiness of men (8:12-13). Man’s final destiny is based upon the necessity of man to fear God (7:18, 11:9, 12:14). Ecclesiastes contemplates the world as one that was Created by God as very good (3:11, 7:29) and as arranged and directed that men might fear God (3:14).

And this fear of God that is put forth so clearly finds its concrete meaning at the end of the book.

“Fear God and Keep His commandments.”

There is thus struck a natural relationship between a life that is supercharged with meaning, fearing God, and walking in the ways of God’s commandments. Distinctions may be drawn between these three realities but they can never be divorced. No one can say that they fear God and not walk in the way of His commandments. Similarly, no can say they have found meaning in life without fearing God. Just so, fearing God, and having meaning exhibits itself by walking in God’s commands.

They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.

“In this world of sin no Christian individual and no Christian organization can be positive and constructive till after it has been negative and destructive. To deny and ignore this fact is to deny or to ignore the fact of sin.”

Cornelius Van Til
Essay On Christian Education, p. 187

When I was a lad I contracted a serious infection. This infection required the scrubbing of my wounds until they bled followed by the administration of the proper ointment on the bleeding wounds. To this day the memory of those scrubbing sessions jolts me upright. And yet, without the cleansing work of the scrubbing, the ointment could not have done its work. The medicine that was intended to heal could not work until I was first wounded.

In many quarters of the West today the Church is deeply wounded. There are no solutions that do not start with being scrubbed of her infected wounds. And because of the necessity for her wounds to be scrubbed (the negative and destructive work that Van Til speaks of) she will not submit and so will not be healed.

“Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.” Hosea 6:2

Prayer

God of all sufficient grace, be so kind as to wound us that we might be healed. Cease not with thy severe mercies that lead us to rejoice in thy tender mercies. Deliver your church from being stiff necked and cause us to yield to your hammer blows of grace as you shape us on the anvil of thy rough kindness.

In Christ’s name,