Feast: Ecclesiastes Resumed (Part Thirty-Four): Ecclesiastes 9:2-12

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Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 24-Oct-24; 70 minutes 2024-10-24

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As we have been hearing, we have considered that the Eighth Day is somewhat of an enigma to most people, even to most theologians, and for all intents and purposes, it appears to be, if you just read the texts in Leviticus and such, just an extension of the Feast of Tabernacles; a day of holy convocation to round out the week. We do not get any extra information, particularly in the Old Testament. So God gives us little indication until the New Testament at least, what it signifies in His grand plan of salvation. In fact, not until Revelation 20:11, toward the end of the chapter, do we get any convincing scriptural support for our belief that the Eighth Day looks forward to the time of the Great White Throne Judgment period, when the uncalled dead will rise as physical human beings for their opportunity for salvation.

Let us go to that in Revelation 20, verse 11. I will go down through verse 13. The preceding verses speak about the 1,000 years, the Millennium, and the rebellion led by Satan the Devil right at the end of it. And then we come upon this, moving forward in time.

Revelation 20:11-13 Then I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works.

So there is a time coming, still 1,000 plus years into the future, when all mankind, those who have not been called, rise from their graves.

We find back in Ezekiel that when it speaks about Israel rising in that same period of judgment, that they are just bones and they come up and all their other sinews and muscles and skin and all that goes into a person are added onto it. You can almost see it cinematically; a person being built back up and breath is put into them, they are breathing again like they had when they had first lived.

And then they are given access to the Holy Spirit at that time which they did not have access to before, and they go through a period of judgment, perhaps 100 years. That is the only indication we are given of a length of time where they will go through something similar to what we are going through now, where they unlearn all the things that they had learned in their life, in history, and they learn the right ways and we will be there to help them along. That will be a big part of our job going forward after the Millennium.

As I mentioned in a sermon many years ago, the Millennium, the 1,000 years, are 1,000 years of preparation for this onslaught of people who will have to be trained. They will have to be fed and clothed and housed. They will have to somehow live in the midst of billions of other people—learning, growing, becoming intimates (as Austin said) of Jesus Christ, like we already are. So they will get their opportunity for salvation. And that is what this time pictures, when God's living water spreads out like the Flood over all the earth and they will have their time of judgment.

Let us go back to I Corinthians 15, if you will. This is, as we call it, the resurrection chapter. But if you think about it, the Great White Throne Judgment period that we just spoke about begins with death. That is the first thing, because all those people are dead. They are dead, buried in the earth, buried in caskets and vaults, buried underwater from all the shipwrecks and sailors being thrown overboard in storms and whatnot. They are in the oceans. Many are burned or cremated. They are all dead! But then life comes because God acts to revive them. But it begins with death. Let us notice this.

I Corinthians 15:20-26 But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. [Mr. Armstrong used to make a point of saying "the same all shall be made alive."] But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

So that section started with death and ended with death. It started with death being an enemy. It ends with death being conquered and totally destroyed and never to rise again.

Now I mentioned that the Great White Throne Judgment has a great deal to do with death, but it has mostly to do with the solution to death. How does it become destroyed? How does it become eradicated?

It will not be until the very end of that period that death will finally be overcome. And until that time is completed, death will still be mankind's implacable enemy. It will still dog every man, woman, and child among the human race. It will be a specter hanging over them. It will instill fear and uncertainty in the hearts of human beings. It is always out there.

Yet through Paul, God promises that death itself will be destroyed. The last thing, mind you, the last thing that is keeping God from being sovereign over everything—but God will conquer it. It will take some time. It will take the process that He has begun to fully spin out and be completed. But it will happen. When He does, when He conquers it, it will never rise again to trouble the children of God. And in time, it will be a mere memory or maybe even we will not remember it because it will be meaningless to us to remember it.

Why? Let us go to II Peter 3, verse 13. This is after Peter talks about the heavens passing away with a great noise and the elements will melt with fervent heat and everything gets burned up. And then he says,

II Peter 3:13 Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Once the events of Revelation 21 begin to happen, there is no death. There is only righteousness. Righteousness and death are opposites because death occurs as the penalty or the punishment for the breaking of God's law. But when there is righteousness, there is no breaking of God's law. And so death is powerless and it will soon disappear. Because in the New Heavens and New Earth, there is only righteousness.

I was going to say, imagine that. We cannot imagine that, not from our perspective. We cannot imagine a world that does not have sin in it because that is all we know. But that is what makes the New Heaven and the New Earth so glorious! It will be pure and pristine forever, never tainted by any kind of sin, any kind of lawlessness, any kind of anti-God thought or feeling or act. We will all be in one accord, living in righteousness.

Let us go back to I Corinthians 15. (I should have had you stick a ribbon in there or something.) We want verses 53 through 57. This is right after where Paul talks about in the twinkling of an eye we will be changed. And this applies to everyone who has ever lived, for us in the first resurrection or for those who come up in the second resurrection. Now, the timing is different. But what he says here in these verses will be the same.

I Corinthians 15:53-57 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

When the billions who rise in the second resurrection follow our lead and accept Christ, repent of their sins, and learn and live this way of life that we are trying to learn and live, for them, death will be swallowed up, devoured, consumed, destroyed in Christ's victory over sin. It will work the same way for them as it is working for us. Will that not be glorious! When everybody has gone through the same process and come to accept God and His way, and when that happens, death will be just like a balloon, you let go, it will be gone.

So in our continuing study of Ecclesiastes, we begin chapter 9, most of which is about death. Death under the sun, primarily. Solomon, or Qoheleth, as he is called, the preacher, sees it as the common enemy of all mankind and it is an enemy everyone must face and one that will ultimately defeat us all in this life. And having said that, what do we do about it? Is this life all there is? How does our knowledge of certain death and the uncertainty about what comes afterward change how we live? Because it should.

Let us go to Psalm 90 because this is a question that has cropped up time and time again throughout human existence. And as Solomon says, it has not been answered very well by mankind. God has always had the answer. But what about us? What about those of us who have been given these answers? How does it affect us to know that we will die? Even though we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, we still must die the Hebrews 9:27 death. How does that change how we live? And for those who are living under the sun, they still have to contemplate this as well, because what do they want to do with this time that they have, no matter what they believe. So, Moses, here in Psalm 90, thinks about this as well and he comes up with a very interesting conclusion.

Psalm 90:9 For all our days have passed away in Your wrath; . . .

What he is saying is we have all come under God's judgment because of our sins and our days seem to go swiftly through their time and all we have is to face the penalty for our mistakes, our iniquities, our transgressions.

Psalm 90:9-10 . . . we finish our years like a sigh. The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off and we fly away.

It is way too short and we do not accomplish a whole lot. And suddenly we are smoke in the wind or dust in the wind, if you are a rock and roll fan.

Psalm 90:11 Who knows the power of Your anger? For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.

And here is his conclusion: because we know that we are mortal, we are going to die, we have only so much time, so he prays to God. He begs Him,

Psalm 90:12 So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Instruct us so that we can conform our character so that we are always walking in wisdom. Wisdom, as my dad famously defined it, is skill in living. Teach us to walk in a way that is skillful so that we produce the best results even in this physical life under the sun. Make good use of your 70 or fourscore years so that you grow in character, so that you grow in wisdom, and that you can die satisfied that you have done your best. Keep this in mind.

Back to Ecclesiastes 9. We will start up where we finished.

Ecclesiastes 9:1-2 For I considered all this in my heart, so that I could declare it all: that the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God. People know neither love nor hatred by anything that is before them. Everything occurs alike to all: One event happens to the righteous and the wicked; to the good, the clean, and the unclean; to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As is the good, so is the sinner; he who takes an oath as he who fears an oath.

In the last sermon we saw when we went through chapter 9, verse 1, that Solomon concludes that God's people are under His sovereign control, which makes them very different from the people of this world. He is not sovereignly controlling them. We heard otherwise, because going through Romans 1, we found out that He gave them over to unclean lusts. He gave them over to a reprobate mind. He said, "Ok, live how you want. If you're not going to worship Me, just go ahead and make a mess of things." That is essentially what He did. He said, "I'm going to work with a few," and it is those few, the wise and the righteous, God's people, whom He is going to have His eye on particularly, and He will intervene in their lives. He will help them and guide them through this mess of humanity. But everybody else He will kind of wait for.

So He has the righteous and the wisest best interests at heart, even within this cruel world with all its inconsistencies and uncertainties and unfairness and inequities and all the terrible things that happen in this world. He says, "Look, this is this world. Good and bad things happen to everyone. No one under the sun lives a charmed life." It may look like some people do. Maybe they have more than you, they get their breaks, you know, they find opportunities and it looks like things are well with them, but that is really not the case.

In I Peter 4:12, he even tells us that our own sufferings, our own trials are pretty common. He says they are common to man. They are what everybody else goes through under the sun. But He has His eye on us and He helps us through those things so we can learn the lessons.

So do not think that you are getting any special treatment in terms of the kind of trials you go through. Your neighbor down the street probably goes through a similar trial. But you have the wisdom of God in your laps and He wants you to use what He has given you to work your way through it and He will keep His eye on you as you go through these trials and help you out and give you pointers and make something happen over here to guide you in the right way. That is good that we have God's eye on us.

He advises us in verse 1 that we just have to put up with the variability and the uncertainty of life and make the most of it. And the same advice goes to people under the sun as well. If they are smart, that is what they would do. So we cannot be too sure about things that happen to us in this life. They happen to everybody and our own perspective is skewed. It is flawed.

So we do not know that the things that happen to us are good or bad because we do not have that long-term perspective on things to know how they are going to turn out. Because oftentimes the bad things turn out to be good and a good thing turns out to be bad. We just cannot know the mind of God that closely, because He sees things from His perspective, He stands outside time, He is working everything to His own ends, and so we just have to kind of go with them and make the most of them. We just need to walk in faith.

As a matter of fact, this is a good basis for walking in faith because we are so unsure about things that the best thing to do is to trust God. We need to remember all the time that God is holding our hands throughout this difficult obstacle course called life. You are the apple of His eye. He loves you, as we have heard a couple of times, as much as He loves His Son Jesus Christ. And He is going to help you like He helped Jesus. He is there on your side. I mean, those of you who have had children, are you not watching your children like a hawk? You have to, they get into trouble, they put themselves in dangerous situations. And God the Father, as our Parent, is treating us the same way and He is watching over us.

Now, He is the most patient Father. He lets you and me get into very bad situations and then He helps us and He tells us that all these things work together for good. But have you ever noticed that getting out of those trials requires a very deep well of faith? And the best way to go is the one that requires the most faith. And so you have to apply yourself in terms of trusting God to take the route He wants you to take so that it will turn out for good. And if we do not take the best route, you know what He does? He says, "Ah, it's been six months, let's put him back in that same trial." Maybe a few variables are different. "But let's see if he's grown enough to figure out the best solution to the problem, not the kick-the-can down the road solution to the problem." We usually take the kick the can route.

But that is how parents are. Parents have to do that. They cannot just tell their child "no, don't do that," and they immediately obey for the rest of their life. There may be one occasion where that happened. I am not saying it is impossible, but it is pretty rare. Usually a parent has to tell that blockheaded kid many times not to do that until it finally gets through that that is not a good thing. "It makes dad or mom mad and they shout things at me," or whatever.

Let us go on to verse 2. Verse 2 continues the idea that this hodgepodge of baffling, fluctuating, enervating circumstances that we live in under the sun is common to everybody. He begins to zero in specifically on to death, but he does not mention it yet. He never uses the word death here as he is talking about verse 2. He has already said that we will meet the same end. I want to read that in chapter 2, verse 14. So it has already come up.

Ecclesiastes 2:14 The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. Yet I perceive the same event happens to them all.

He is talking about death. Whether you are wise or whether you are a fool, you are going to eventually die. And that is what he is talking about. He is bringing this forward into chapter 9 that one event happens to the righteous and to the wicked. We all know what he means. He is talking about death. Now he has decided to take this subject, the same event that happens to us all, and he is going to expand his discussion on it. He says that here in verse 2, that death does not play favorites. It is not exclusive to certain ones, unless we say that death is exclusive to sinners because the wages of sin is death. But this explains why death is ubiquitous because, let us read Romans 3, verses 9 through 19. This is why death happens to everyone.

Romans 3:9-19 What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. [He is talking about what he had mentioned here in the earlier part of chapter 3 about the Jew having an advantage.] For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all gone out of the way; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one." "Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit"; "The poison of asps is under their lips"; "Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known." "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And this is why Paul and Solomon and others can say that everyone will die. Death has a claim on them because they have all sinned.

Now, back in Ecclesiastes 9:2, Solomon lists five pairs of opposites. They are various groups of people, some of which are general, these groupings, and some are specifically describing practitioners of religious rituals, and especially the Old Covenant rituals, the religion, that we would call it, of the Old Testament. Now, the ones that he specifically speaks to in terms of religious practices are the clean and the unclean, those who sacrifice and those who do not sacrifice, and those who take an oath and those who fear taking oaths. The inclusion of these religious people is probably designed by Solomon to say even you religious types, you people who believe you are pious or even, he could be saying, you Levites and priests, even you will face death. None of your religious practices exempts you from it. You will die like the rest of us, all sinners, whether we are thought to be good or bad. We are all going to die.

And so his list here of these five different sets of opposites includes everybody. Nobody gets out of death. No one receives a "get out of death card."

By the way, the last line here, "he who takes an oath as he who fears an oath," might be more understandable to us as the innocent person who takes an oath is as the guilty person who fears taking an oath. So you come before a judge or you come before whoever and they want you to swear whether you did something or not. And the innocent person will take an oath and say no, I did not do that, but the guilty person will fear to take the oath because he is probably going to lie and then he comes under God's judgment. So he is saying, it does not matter. In this particular circumstances it is, whether you take an oath or you do not take an oath, you are going to die.

Back to Ecclesiastes 9.

Ecclesiastes 9:3-4 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: that one thing happens to all. Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But for him who is joined to all the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

Here we start to get into his main concern. The fact that all die, no matter if their lifestyle is good or bad, he says is a great evil. We might put it this way, paraphrase his thought here as far as I understand. He is saying, if everyone is going to die and if a person has a fair chance to make evil pay in this life under the sun, why should he even try to be good? That is his fear. That is why he says it is a great evil because Solomon knew, like Jeremiah knew in Jeremiah 17:9, that "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked."

He knew that will not most people think this evil thought and practice it? That is, this evil thought of: I can get away with a lot of evil and make my life a whole lot better than what it is now. And he calls this internal evil madness. That is, thinking that you can have a good life by doing evil. Now that stretches the idea of what good is. But that is how people think of it. If they are prospering, if they have a nice car, if they have a nice house, and they have all these contacts in the business world and the political world and the music world and the acting world and all these things, and they think they are living the good life, but they have done it by doing evil, by being iniquitous. They have gotten to where they are by nefarious means, that is madness. Solomon says it is insane, crazy, foolish! It is not thinking straight.

In other words, he is saying, you people who are doing this have a mental disease, you are mentally ill to choose evil over good. It is the reason for death, choosing evil, and the pathway to death.

Let us look at Proverbs 2. I will give you a few examples of this from Solomon's other writings, particularly the Proverbs.

Proverbs 2:18 [he is talking about the adulteress] For her house leads down to death, and her paths to the dead.

Let us move forward to chapter 5. Similar thing.

Proverbs 5:5 Her feet go down to death, and her steps lay hold of hell [or the grave.

Forward again to chapter 7, verse 27.

Proverbs 7:27 Her house is the way to hell, descending to the chambers of death.

And that is just one particular sin.

Solomon is saying all evil that a person does in order to live a "good" life is just as insane as going to the prostitute or committing adultery. They all lead down the path to death. And to think you are getting away with it because you can have parties with the rich and famous—insane, absolutely insane. His argument has the force of you must be insane to live for evil, destruction, and death. What kind of life is that? That is no way to live. It is a way to die! Even if we have just this life under the sun, we may as well seek joy and success and peace and a good legacy, rather than misery, ill-gotten gains, contention, and ignominy.

It reminded me as I was putting this together of a quotation from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is something Samwise Gamgee, a servant and best friend of Frodo Baggins said to his master when he was particularly down. He told him, "There is some good in this world, Mister Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."

I think a lot of people take that wrongly. Tolkien was a pretty wise man and he was not talking about military victory. That is how a lot of people think when use the words "that's worth fighting for." He was talking about doing good things, doing good deeds, doing things that will make a difference, doing things that will help a situation, that will enhance life. And those are the things worth fighting for.

And that is what Solomon is talking about too. Even though we know that we are all going to die, it is far more rational to live for good, to make something of oneself, to make other people's lives better.

Now, verse 4 here is the source of the expression "where there is life, there is hope."

Ecclesiastes 9:4 But for him who is joined to all the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

Even in a life full of evil and madness, hope can exist because there is still the opportunity to change course, to do what needs doing, to say those things that need to be said, to fix relationships, to right a wrong, to better ourselves. If you are alive, you can do something. But if you are dead, sorry, time is up.

Some commentators will say that this is a false hope because our lives still end in death. But that is, just to my mind, sheer pessimism. It is always hopeful to make things better for others, to have joyous and peaceful relations with others, to strive for good and peace and justice. Those are the kinds of things that make living life under the sun worth living. They provide hope that there is life and good beyond death, even if men under the sun cannot be certain.

Now, the proverb ending verse 4, "for a living dog is better than a dead lion" plays with opposites again: the living and the dead, the dog and the lion. People at that time considered dogs contemptible, dirty, horrible animals; wild, scavengers, garbage eaters, they will even eat the dead. Dead things, yes, but even dead humans, corpses on a battlefield and such, whatever they can get. And he compares this then, this idea of a dog to the lion.

The lion has long been considered a noble, proud, powerful beast. It has been a symbol of kings and rulers for millennia. But in this world, under the sun, it is preferable to be lowly, even despicable but alive, than to be dead, though one led nations or armies and everyone bowed and scraped. The living dog still exists and can improve his life. Not so for the lion, he is dead.

So it is better to be living in whatever circumstances you may happen to be than to be dead. Death is an enemy. It means your time is up.

Let us go back to Ecclesiastes 9, verse 5.

Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 For the living know that they will die [this is a continuation of verse 4]; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, their hatred, their envy have now perished; nevermore will they have a share in anything done under the sun.

That is kind of sad. Living people can have hope, Solomon says, because of something everyone knows: that a living person is still aware, still self-aware, conscious, intelligent, and he knows that his time will come soon when he will join the dead. But all a corpse does is rot; the dead know nothing, think nothing, do nothing. They are absolutely incapable of anything. They have no future for good or ill in the grave. They are just going to go back to the dust from which God created them. They have already received all the benefits of life that they have received and what they received at the end was death. That is their final reward. It is what they deserve for their sins, and now they have paid, and now they are in the grave and there is no more. Cannot do anything.

But believe it or not, death has a few good sides. Have you ever thought of that? Death can be called a final "under the sun" reward. I have got three good, positive things about to say about death.

1. It provides a rest from one's labors in this world of toil, adversity, and sorrow. I want to go back to Genesis 3, verses 17 through 19. This is the curse on Adam and God explains to Adam what his sin had caused to happen. And it is the life that we all now live.

Genesis 3:17-19 Then to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it' [you transgressed the law]: "Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

So the word picture He spins here is a man working and working and working. I have mentioned before, it is the idea of a man in a field trying to bring up food for his family. And he works and he works and he works, and he battles the thorns and the thistles; and he works and he works and he works, and maybe he succeeds, maybe he does not. But he works and he works and he works, and he sweats and he falls down dead between the furrows. That is life. All toil. To get what? To barely subsist?

Many lives have been like that. Whether they are farming or whether they are hunting or whether they are gathering or whatever they are doing, you know, whether they are plugging in formulas for some big company, it is a lot of toil, and what do you get at the end? You die. And so after all that toil, you get to rest. I mean, how would we bear it if we just kept living in constant futile labor, sin and destruction, endlessly. If we had an immortal life and all of that immortality was used working, working, working, working, working, working. It would be horrible! You would never get a break.

So it is better to die and rest from fighting this evil world in hope that God has provided something more than nothing, more than nihilism. Remember, this is for under the sun, for people under the sun who are uncertain about the way things will be after death. And so for them, death is rest. It is for us too. But for them with working and working without any knowledge or hope of what is coming, it actually is a good thing that they die and they rest, because their future is bright in the second resurrection, if they will just grasp what God is offering.

So though it is an enemy, death is often a relief from endless human suffering, if only by the amount of labor we have to expend.

Let us go to Isaiah 57. This is another reason why death can be a positive under the circumstances.

Isaiah 57:1-2 The righteous perishes, and no man takes it to heart; merciful men are taken away, while no one considers that the righteous is taken away from evil. He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.

This is kind of the story of Enoch, in a way. We can use that as an early example of a righteous person taken away from trouble and allowed to go to his rest. If you want to look at his story, it is very spare, but it is in Genesis 5:18-24. A righteous man taken by God to escape evil, even evil that is in the future. But Enoch still perished, he still died. And so he qualified for the Hebrew 9:27 death at some point. He is not up in heaven, you know, drinking wine with Elijah. It is just not what happened. He was taken away from a very serious situation and allowed to die in peace.

But we can also apply this to the death of the saints. We comfort ourselves that our loved ones who died in the faith will not have to face the coming evils of this world or even the tumult of the Tribulation and the Day of the Lord. God has determined that they get to rest through it. It is peaceful in the grave, believe it or not. We do not feel it because we have no consciousness. But that is how God thinks of it, as a rest from our labors. So the saints who have proved their righteousness are allowed to die by God as a mercy so that they do not have to suffer anymore. Their judgment is finished in His eyes and they can rest not having to worry or stress or suffer anymore.

Let us go on to the third one. Death can be seen to be good when a person who has been exceptionally evil dies. That is, especially an evil person who has done harm to many people. Those like a Hitler or Stalin or a Mao or a Genghis Khan or serial killers or other menaces to society. That is another hope of the living who suffer under such despots and evildoers, that the evil person's death will provide them a respite from misery and suffering.

I mean, just think about all those Jews who were in the concentration camps when they heard that Hitler had died and the war had ended. What a relief! They may not have known what was going to happen in the next months or years, but now they did not have to worry about the Gestapo and the Nazis and the death chambers and all of those things. It was a welcome relief that the evil person had died because death is a means to ensure evil does not become too strong.

Now, before the Flood, when people lived nearly a millennium, this foil or counter to evil was not as effective. Because evil men could live 1,000 years and keep doing evil and more evil and affecting more people with their evil ways. So God saw that that was not good and so God immediately corrected this after the Flood, decreasing the human lifespan to 120 years and then to 70 years, to make sure that things did not spin out of control in terms of evil too soon.

Chapter 9, verses 5 and 6 here in Ecclesiastes, says that ultimately just about everything about a person is forgotten; it says "the memory of them is forgotten." All their love, hatred, envy, perish and they will never have a share of anything under the sun. An under the sun person leaves no lasting legacy. He may think he does. He may think he has left millions for his family, great tracts of land, a wonderful corporation or a history of leadership in politics or whatever you think. But time erases all that, whether it was good or whether it was bad.

In fact, the phrasing here in verses 5 and 6 suggests they are not even worthy of a remembrance. All their great and wonderful works really are not very great at all. I mean, it is like Ozymandias. He ruled the world and he is just a broken down statue in the desert. How long did his memory last? Not very long. I mean, he was a great king—and people forgot about him.

The Hittite Empire was massively successful, covered many, many thousands of square miles across the Levant, the Near East. And in the 1800s, archaeologists and historians did not even know they had existed because they would not believe the Bible. The Bible says that the Hittites were a strong people, but they did not think that the Bible was right. And it took them digging up places like Troy and other places in Turkey to finally get it through their thick skulls that the Hittites actually had existed. But all their monuments and all their deeds had been forgotten for a couple millennia.

So because people are dead who have tried to make these legacies, they have no opportunity to add to them, to change them, or even to proclaim them. They are dead. All those things are forgotten. Who cares? They are just some people who did okay and we do not remember what their names are. Their portion or their share was this physical life and it ended, they are out of the game. Their token placed back in the box and it will not be retrieved from there until the second resurrection.

Let us continue on in verse 7 and we will read through verse 10. Solomon tells us,

Ecclesiastes 9:7-10 Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already accepted your works. Let your garments always be white, let your head lack no oil. Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life which He has given you under the sun, all your days of vanity; for that is your portion in life, and in the labor which you perform under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going.

So Solomon, here, the preacher, does not give us advice. He commands us with an imperative here: "Go!" and then he tells us what to do. One commentator, a man named Graham Ogden, calls this the fifth Carpe Diem passage. "Seize the day." If you want the others, they are chapter 2, verses 24 through 26; chapter 3, verses 13 and 14; chapter 5, verses 18 through 20; chapter 8, verse 15. All of these tell us live joyfully, eat, drink, and be merry. Put your heart into your work and your family.

And then he tells us here, the sense of it is, when he says, go, eat your bread with joy and all the rest, he is saying, start right now to live your life fully. You do not have any time to waste. Take joy in the good things of life. He is not saying to overindulge. Do not read that into it. But he is saying just enjoy the pleasures of life because the labors, the sorrows, the disappointments, the pains of human life under the sun make them rare occurrences. Like Feast days. Feast days only come around seven times in the year. How many times during the year do you have times of joy where you can relax for a few minutes and just enjoy?

Now, the construction of these verses highlights three major areas in life. That is, times of feasting (the festival times), marital relations, and work. Or we can think of them as celebrations, religious or not, family, and your occupation. These are vital parts of everyone's lives, or should be. And he is saying, make the most of them, put your full efforts into them, take joy in them, build a good life around them, because none of these things can be done in the grave, after death. All of that will be over. It is a place of non-life, of absolute inactivity.

The four words he uses here of things unable to be done after death, he says here: there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom. Those four words can be alternately translated as: deeds for work or acts. There are no deeds or acts. For a device: plans or schemes. So there are no deeds or acts, plans or schemes. For knowledge: learning or understanding. That is, there are no deeds or acts, or plans or schemes, or learning or understanding, as well as wisdom, which can be alternately translated as skill or aptitude.

So there are no deeds or acts, there is no plans or schemes, there is no learning or understanding, there is no use of skill or aptitude in the grave. There is nothing. So we need to do all the doing now and we do not have time to waste.

The next verses, 11 and 12, he says,

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 I returned and saw under the sun that—the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all. For man also does not know his time: like fish taken in a cruel net, like birds caught in a snare, so the sons of men are snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them.

Now, note that this applies to people under the sun. He says that right in verse 11, "I saw under the sun." Misfortunes that thwart human endeavors happen to everyone. Oftentimes, talents or strength have little to do with how things turn out. Sometimes it is luck, what we call good luck. Sometimes it is bad luck, coincidence. Remember, this is for people under the sun. Sometimes it is sheer accident that you happen to be in the right place at the right time. It is serendipity.

God is not intervening for those under the sun unless it suits His purpose. So things just happen. It happens for them or it happens against them. It just happens! It is the way things worked out. It is this person being at a certain place at a certain time or this person doing something on the spur of the moment and it works out for good. Or on the other hand, it does not work out for good. It actually turns out pretty bad.

Solomon says that he looked at life and he looked at a lot of different things and he figured out there is no rhyme or reason, things just happen. There may be ways to figure out the probability. But no one can predict when misfortune or death will happen.

So in this way, as he says, people under the sun are also like beasts because they just go and do and live and things just happen. For the lion, an antelope just happens to cross his trail and he eats. While it also occurs that he, out there in the savannah, never sees an antelope and he starves. It just happened. That was not designed by God. It just happens because they are just living in a world where there is little divine control because He has given them over to living that way. That is what we found in Romans 1:24, 26, and 28.

Unfortunately, people under the sun in this world must live in a cruel and un unpredictable world. And so Solomon says this is something you really cannot figure out, it just happens. And we waste a lot of sleep trying to worry about it. God is actually in sovereign control, but right now, His gaze is on His chosen people.

Let us go to Jeremiah 9. We will end here.

Jeremiah 9:23-24 Thus says the Lord: "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight," says the Lord.

Those who have been chosen to understand and live lives over the sun or in the heavenly places are different. Different from those who live under the sun, different from those who live in a chaotic incomprehensible world. We have God closely watching over us, watching our lives, giving them direction, and He gives us what we need, intervening as necessary to guide us, mold us, shape us, in preparation for His Kingdom. He has not given us over to a reprobate mind. Instead, He has given us His mind through the Holy Spirit to make wise decisions and to point our lives toward the Kingdom of God.

Thank God that He does not leave us to the uncertainties of this present evil world. Thank God that He delights in us!

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