Preapproved Joy | Ecclesiastes 9:1-12 (11-5-2023 Mark Evans)

Solomon continues his sermon series on the book of Ecclesiastes, emphasizing the inevitability of death for all people, regardless of their righteousness or wickedness. He warns against the irrationality and hopelessness of a life lived without God. However, he also introduces the hope of the living, stating that those who are joined with the living have confidence and a better state than the dead. Solomon uses the analogy of a living dog being better off than a dead lion to illustrate this point. If you have your Bibles, do grab them, make your way to the book of Ecclesiastes as we continue our sermon series through this wonderful book. And our scripture reading for this morning comes in Ecclesiastes 9 and will be in the first 12 verses of Ecclesiastes chapter 9. And these are the words of the one and the only God. For all this I laid to heart, examined it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God, whether it is love or hate, man does not know, both are before him. It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, as he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil and all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun. Go, eat your bread with joy, drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white, let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds you to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you are going. Again I 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 the intelligent nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all, for man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time when it suddenly falls upon them. When we know that the grass withers and the flower fades, let us pray. Heavenly Father, I confess even as we just read, here we are, just frail children of dust, and we go from ash to ash, dust to dust, that time and chance happen to us all. And so we do pray that you would give us a heart of wisdom and give us eyes to see, give us ears to hear, and teach us to number our days that we might truly glorify you, to receive the good gifts that you have given us, even hearing that you have already approved what we do. We pray we would know exactly how this is so, to the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Men, you may be seated. Jean Dixon was one of America's best known and leading psychics of the 20th century. She was said to have predicted the assassination of JFK, predicted the terrorist attacks that came in the wake of the Munich massacre. And these predictions garnered her worldwide fame, and even garnered her the attention of the president. But most surprising was her prediction on January 2, 1997, when she predicted that a famous entertainer would die within weeks. But no one was more surprised than her, because it was just three weeks after that, that Jean Dixon herself died in a sudden heart attack. And so for all that she claimed to have foreseen, she did not see that death coming. And such is life under the sun. Time and chance happen to us all. And Solomon wants to show us this morning that whether you are the most God-fearing of persons, or the most pagan of persons, it matters not. Death is coming for you. Whether you faithfully worship the Lord every Lord's Day, or if you never worship the Lord on the Lord's Day, because the night before, you are closing down the bar, so to speak. Solomon says, either way, death is going to snatch you. And that grim reality is unsettling, because we want to confess, what we saw last week, that it will go well for those who fear the Lord. And yet Solomon says, fear Him or not, death is coming for you. Well, hopefully, as you know by now, that though it seems like Solomon is the last person you would want to invite to a party, because he's just going to pour pessimism all over your parade, you know by now that he has a good word for us. He has a wise word for us, and that good word today is the hope of the living. And so we'll walk through most of chapter 9 in three parts, but really just focusing on that main point, this hope of the living, asking and hopefully answering the question, what is this great hope, knowing that time and chance happen to everyone. So let's dive into the first six verses, as Solomon tells us in this section, that death is the great equalizer, it's the great leveler of mankind. Some commentators think that Solomon writes Ecclesiastes from a secular point of view, maybe examining life from the atheist perspective. And you can see why they would think that, right? All this talk of death and dying and vanity, it's not the sentimental stuff that warms the heart. It's not the stuff you put on a billboard or print on a Christian t-shirt. It is emphatically a Christian book in every way. You can see it right away in verse 1. Solomon says, I'm examining how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. The whole book assumes life, quorum Deo, life in God's presence. And while it might seem like Ecclesiastes folds in a kind of random helter-skelter way, Solomon actually leads us through a very carefully sustained argument. Because you'll remember how he began us with our most basic of human pursuits, pursuits like pleasure, like power, like wealth, the things that we think are oh so meaningful. Solomon exposed just how vaporous they really are. And now comes the final nail in the coffin, you might say, that demonstrably proves just how vaporous you and I are. And that nail in the coffin, pun intended, is the nail of death. I think that is good news for us to hear. We tend to live as if the one thing that is certain, death, will never come, while the many uncertain things in life will certainly come. And so you can skim through the first three verses and see how Solomon rattles off a number of polarities and a number of opposites, as if to say it really doesn't matter which side of the aisle you are on. Verse 2, he says, it's the same for all, the same event happens to the righteous and to the wicked. And he just goes on from there to say whether you're good or evil, clean or unclean, you sacrifice or you're selfish, you're good or you're a sinner, you keep an oath or you never keep your word. Regardless, this event is coming for you. And of course, we all know this to be true experientially on a lesser level, right? If there's a power outage, it's not as though every Christian home retains electricity and everyone else is in the dark. If there's a flood, it's not as though the Christian home is not flooded while everyone else is under water. And Solomon says the same thing here, above all, that's true of death. Simply put, keeping God's law will not keep away death. But with that in mind, we want to be careful not to draw the wrong conclusions from Solomon's argument. Because if we hear Solomon say, look, it doesn't matter whether you're righteous or wicked or clean or unclean, either way you die, you don't want to conclude from that, well, I guess a life of righteousness must not be that important. Maybe it's even worthless. Noah's always were to go deeper in. And so Solomon says, yes, death comes for all, but the life of the unrighteous has two major disadvantages. It is a life of madness and it is a life that is hopeless. You see in verse 3, he says, a man's heart is inclined unto evil, which we covered last week. But now he adds that man has madness in his heart while he lives. This word for madness means something like blindness, delusional, foolishness. We're reminded not just of the sinfulness of sin, but that sin is also irrational. It's madness without method. If you've ever tried to make sense of sin, you'll soon find it is impossible to do so. Sin constructs a false worldview. It's based off of lies. By sin, we hurt those that we actually love the most. In sin, we don't just deceive others, that's one thing, we actually deceive ourselves. And in sin, man declares, I want pleasure, I will have pleasure, and yet he turns his back on the God who is the source of all pleasure and joy. It's this way that seems right to a man, but its end is death. It's all behavior that if a modern-day psychologist had the eyes to see, he would diagnose it as the height of irrationalism. And so the unrighteous have madness in the heart, but not just madness, it's also hopeless. You see, at the end of verse 3, Solomon concludes, it's madness while you're living, and then after that comes death, the end. And so we're meant to feel the full weight of such irrationalism and hopelessness, because in that despair, notice this great hope that rides in in verse 4. It's found in that little word, but. It's that same word that comes to the rescue in Ephesians 2 when Paul says, we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but God. Well, same thing here. Man will die, but that's not the end of the story. As verse 4 says, but those who are joined with all the living have hope. Notice Hebrew word even meaning confidence, a confidence that only those joined to the living possess. And then Solomon explains it with one of his famous proverbs in verse 4. He says, a living dog is better than a dead lion. So we have these two creatures who could not be more different in terms of their status. Now, this might be lost on us today because of our near absurd adoration for dogs, right? We take pictures of our dogs. We walk them around in strollers. We pretend they're our children. This is stuff the ancient Israelite would find deranged behavior. Because in their culture, a dog was an abased, a lowly creature, right? If you've ever been to a third world country, you've seen stray dogs scampering around in back alleys, licking their sores, just trying to scrape out an existence. Picture that kind of dog. And by comparison, consider the lion, right? The lion is noble, stately creature. The lion does as he pleases. Kids, if you've ever been to the zoo, you'll notice how people crowd around just to see the lion. Even if the lion is just lazing around, still seems like he's sitting on his throne, presiding over the zoo. And Solomon says, the righteous absolutely can prosper in this life and live like a lion for their time upon earth. And yet, he says, better to be the degraded dog so long as that dog still has breath. Because verse 5, he says, at least the living know that they will die. When you're alive, you still have opportunity. You can still make the best use of the time. You can still repent. You can still find the fear of the Lord. And by contrast, the dead lion is still dead, having no opportunity, no reward, and they are forgotten. And so, if you're here this morning and not a Christian, the good news is that if you can hear my voice, that means you are still alive. And that's good news because Solomon says, you still have time. You still have opportunity. You could turn from the madness of sin, from the hopelessness of sin, from its death, even its eternal punishment that it leads to. And Scripture is clear, the wisest thing that anyone could do is to come to the Lord Jesus Christ in simple faith and trust in Him. Because the Christian's great hope is though that, yes, death is coming, death is not the end of the story. And as much as it is hope for the future, it, of course, also shapes how we live in the present. Knowing that we will die is not morbid curiosity. It's not morbid fixation. Now, we see in our next section how the Christian lives in the present moment with a kind of pre-approved joy. Joy, surprisingly, is a major theme of Ecclesiastes. We've seen persistent joy, preoccupied joy. Solomon now says the Christian has a kind of pre-approved joy. You know that term pre-approval well, right? You go to get a loan, you go to get a mortgage, or even just in your junk mail, you might get this letter that says, congratulations, you have been pre-approved, right? This idea being there's no need to apply, you've already passed muster. Well, the Christian enjoys the ultimate pre-approval and you see it in verse 7, go, eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart. Why? God has already approved what you do. This is one of Solomon's whiplash moments, is how I think of it. This is such a hard pivot from the previous section because he just took us from the soap reality of death to now drinking wine with joy, right? We went from funerals to feasting. As if he said, you're going to die, now go enjoy your sandwich. It seems very abrupt. It seems disorganized. But when you consider the Christian's great hope that not even death itself, cancels out our hope, begins to make more and more sense why you'd live with such joy in the present moment. Indeed, this is actually not even a suggestion. These Hebrew verbs in verse 7 of go, eat, drink, those are imperatives. Our God is not suggesting, he is commanding us to take joy. Such is the goodness of God that he commands our delight. You see this when God instituted the feast of booze or the feast of tabernacles. God told Israel, okay, you're to take off from work. No labor for seven days and instead, you're simply to feast and to celebrate before me. Take the best fruit off the best trees, take off the entire week and simply rejoice before me. That is our God. And here he says, go, eat, drink and be joyful. Because if we're honest, we struggle with this more than we realize. We tend to fail at this in two extremes. On one end, and we start to worship the gifts rather than the giver, loving the things of the world apart from God, forgetting that every good, every simple gift is just meant to pilot us upwards towards God. On the opposite end, we reject God's good gifts. It's the kind of strict ascetic belief that says, well, since my heart is evil, created things are evil, I'm just going to avoid them as much as possible. It's the slogan from Colossians, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. But Ecclesiastes has shown us that the truly spiritual person knows how to use physical things. The spiritual person enjoys physical things to God's glory. And Solomon shows us this better path between those two extremes by declaring God has already approved it. And if we need more convincing, he shows us how to go about it. Verse 7, he says, do it with a merry heart, a merry heart. We saw last week, God cures the evil heart by giving us an entirely new heart. And now with that new heart comes this new disposition, that the Christian is full of cheer and gratitude. It says Proverbs 15 says, the man with a merry heart has a continual feast. As Ecclesiastes has shown us, you can't reduce the Christian life to a formula. Our temptation is to inventory our bank account, our relationships, our work, and then we start drawing conclusions. Oh, I guess God must be pleased with me because I can point to this pile of cash here. I can point to this successful startup. I can point to my good health. There's God's favor. And Solomon says, no, you'll know that God is pleased with you from the joy that is in your heart, that is the fruit of His Spirit working in you. Ask yourself the simple question, do I have a merry heart? In the simplest of things, in receiving my daily bread, do I make merry before God? And if you struggle to do so, hear once again the main reason for the Christian's cheer in verse 7, God has already approved what you do. This is in some ways just an echo of Eden, isn't it, that God placed Adam and Eve in the garden and said, here you go. It's all good and it's all yours, save one tree. I have authorized everything for your enjoyment and for my glory. And now as eating was one of our first sins, maybe we're right to wonder, well, is Solomon being presumptuous here? Is this a kind of perpetual green light on all things? You know, do we read this as a kind of blank check to just indulge in anything that comes our way without discernment? Well, certainly not, right? If you just remember the entire tone of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, if you make a god of pleasure, you will forfeit pleasure. But if you walk in the fear of the Lord, you'll begin to have rightly ordered loves. Do you remember how Titus put it, that to the pure, all things are pure? And for you and I, for New Covenant believers, we have the even fuller story than did Solomon, that God approves of what we do because above all, God approves of us in Jesus Christ. It's the beautiful truth that in Christ, not only are we forgiven, but positively speaking, we are accepted. Of course, we want to speak much of forgiveness, boast in forgiveness, but we also don't want to limit the gospel to mere forgiveness because the amazing grace of our God is not only does He forgive us, not only does He pardon us, but positively, He accepts us. He delights in us through Jesus Christ. We don't have to earn God's favor. We have God's favor in Jesus Christ. And so on that basis, how much more would Solomon say, when you go home today and enjoy a simple sandwich, you should be spilling over with gratitude because the God of the universe has already approved of what you are doing. Gratitude is such a great indicator of the soul's health, isn't it? For the alcoholic is not thankful for alcohol. The greedy man is not thankful for his wealth. The glutton is not thankful for food. The anxious parent so often forgets to be thankful for one's children. But the more we know by faith that God has already approved of what we do, indeed approved of us, the more and more we abound in thanksgiving. But Solomon doesn't stop there. The coalesce ratchets up from enjoying daily bread to now enjoying your bride. Verse 8, he says, let your garments be white. Let oil not be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love. And so just a word to our husbands, once again, that verb there, enjoy, is not a suggestion. That's actually a command to take joy in and with your wife. The goodness of our God is once again on full display. He doesn't just want marriages. He wants joyful marriages. And He had sometimes said, in fact, I've often heard it said of marriage in Christian circles, that marriage is not meant to make you happy but holy. And no doubt there is some truth in that, that marriage between two sinners is very certainly refining, it can be challenging, it can be even arduous. But if that is our highest wisdom on marriage, we are grossly falling short because God's Word very frequently says just the opposite, that marriage is for happiness, that it is a blessed thing, it is a good thing, it's a desirable thing, it's a pleasurable thing to be man and wife. As Proverbs says, when a man finds a wife, he finds a good thing. And if we think back again to the garden, the one thing that was not good was for man to be alone. And so, just a word to our younger members. You should be well aware that marriage is often pitched today as a, quote, lifestyle choice. It's just one option among many other equally legitimate options for you to pursue. So our younger people are now waiting longer than ever to get married, if they even do. They're waiting longer than ever to have children, if they even do. But hear the Word of the Lord, it is a good, it's a godly ambition for a man and wife to enjoy one another. And so husbands, just ask yourself that simple question. Do you enjoy your wife? How much time do you spend with your wife? How much do you purposely pursue her? How often do you look at one another and laugh together? How much do you prize and adore her? And if your answers are less than desirable, the good news is that you're still alive. And that obedience is the opener of eyes. All right? Our God promises to work His will into our lives. And so the more that you seek to love your wife, to nourish her, to cherish her, the more and more you will enjoy her. And of course, Solomon would certainly say, yes, a sure way to ruin a marriage is to idolize it. Right? If you say, my happiness, my felt needs are utmost, they're non-negotiable, Solomon would say, see the earlier sections of my book. If you make a god of pleasure, you will not have pleasure. And one Puritan put it well, your marriage is a means of happiness only as it increases your love for God. There's not a trace of sentimentality from Solomon. And verse 9 would never appear in a sappy romantic comedy that we see today. As it reads, enjoy your wife all the days of your vain life. It's like saying, honey, I'll love you for all the short and stupid little days that we are given under the sun. Because our earthly marriages are not the end of the story, right? It teaches us to look to the deeper mystery, the permanent happiness of Jesus Christ and His bride, His bride who is clothed in white, His bride who has the oil of gladness that never runs dry. So we've covered leisure, we've covered marriage, now when you add in work, this pretty much covers how we spend all of our time. Verse 11, Solomon says, whatever your hand finds you to do, do it with your might, for there's no work or thought or knowledge in death. Now you might wonder, well, where is the joy in this? Working with all of my might sounds more exhausting than it does joyful. But is it not true that something done lazily, half-heartedly, slothfully actually sucks the joy out of the work? And yet I've noticed we often carry around the unspoken assumption that the best kind of work that there is, is work that is easy and work that pays a lot. And the American idea that the very point of work is to work so that you no longer have to work anymore. But we're to remember that work is a pre-fall calling, that God placed Adam and his helpmate Eve in the garden and He said, work it, guard it, keep it. Because it's also not true that when you look back over things accomplished, it's most often the things that were the hardest, the things that were the most difficult and demanding that you actually found to be the most worthwhile. Certainly this is the case in parenting. Raising godly children is one of the most demanding, challenging of things. Only a fool would claim that that's easy. That's also not true. It's one of the most joyful things, one of the most rewarding things, to bring up children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. And so it is in the workplace. The Christian worker ought to stand out as to just how hardworking, how diligent, how competent he is, that his work is not slack, that as Luther said, the Christian knows that his work is not just a job, it's not just an occupation, but that God Himself has called him to His work. That whether he is at the most secular of companies, in the most secular of industries, the Christian knows, God has called me to this post. And kids, what a great word for you to hear today, that whatever you set out to do, do it with all of your might, even, I would even say especially, the simple things. Kids, your parents give you chores to do, or work to do, and they say, clean your room, do your schoolwork, mow the yard, take out the trash. Kids, you want to say in your mind, I will do this with all of my might, with all of my heart. And maybe you're asking, well, why is that? Is that just because you love trash? You love the smell of trash? If only I could do trash five times a day instead of once a week. No, you want to do it with all of your heart, because it is honoring to the Lord, and He will reward work done unto Him. Lest we become puffed up and prideful that our hard work comes by the strength of man, we turn now to our final section, which immediately humbles us. And you see that in verse 11. Solomon says, "'The race is not to the swift, battle not to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge.'" This is one of those statements that counters all worldly wisdom. Why would an Olympic sprinter beat you ten out of ten times in the hundred meter? Because he is faster and stronger. Why do our Navy SEALs obliterate the common Afghan soldier? Well, because they are tougher, they're better trained, they're stronger. Why does the Ivy League investment banker make more money than you or I? Well, he's keener, he's savvier, he's smarter. And so go man's besetting temptation is to start to trust in those abilities, those ingenuities, the strength of man. But Solomon is going to show us now how God's ways are higher than man's ways. Because we've seen so far, Solomon wants us to confess two things simultaneously. Firstly, to confess that God is sovereign, God is in control of all things, check. But secondly, that we also confess we don't know exactly how God is sovereign and in control. We know that God is in control, but we can't explain all of His ways. We don't have the blueprints to His divine plans. You could say we're on a need-to-know basis, that God has told us everything that we need to know, but not a single word more. Even as He says at the end of verse 11, time and chance happen to everyone. Run as fast as you can, you're not going to outrun time. Fight as hard as you can, you will not outfight death. All the smarts in the world are not going to outsmart chance. Now, it's not hard to imagine a prickly Reformed theologian rebuking Solomon here, saying, Solomon, don't you know there's no such thing as chance? Everything happens according to God's sovereign plan. You need to remove the word chance from your vocabulary. And that is to be a good scientist, but a horrible poet. The scripture repeatedly recognizes that what looks to be from our limited perspective, our human perspective, chance, a freak occurrence, an accident you could even say. You might remember how King Ahab's death was described in battle. It was said of King Ahab that a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel in between his armor and his breastplate. And on top of it all, King Ahab was wearing a disguise out on the battlefield. He probably had on those glasses with the mustache underneath it to look like a civilian. And if you were there on the battlefield, you would have thought, wow, what a freak occurrence. What an accident that of all the places this arrow could have struck, it happened to slide right into the chink of his armor. And yet that so-called accident happened precisely according to God's sovereign plan. So is life under the sun. God tells us that he is in control, but he doesn't reveal to us all his secret counsels. Knowing that God is in control is far different than knowing how God is sovereign. You might remember, it was just two weeks ago, we prayed for Highland Park Presbyterian Church just down the road from here, whose pastor suddenly, unexpectedly died in his Just a few years older than I am. It's just as verse 12 says, man is taken at an evil time. Evil not so much being a moral term, but more like saying an unpredictable, an inopportune time. Even this analogy, a man is like a fish, just happily swimming along, and suddenly a net snares him up. And when those kind of tragedies happen, anyone close to it wants to make sense of it. I know for me, I want answers. I want to see if I can have some kind of satisfactory wisdom that will resolve that. Maybe do some experiments. And Solomon says, go right ahead. You can try all you want, but you will be no more better informed than when you first began because man cannot find out the work done under the sun. God has so ordered life this way so that man would place all of his trust, all of his hope in our God, that the victory is not to the strong in the final analysis, that the spoils do not go to the victor in the final analysis. As Paul says in Corinthians, the foolishness of God is wiser than men. The weakness of God is stronger than men. And nowhere is that truth clearer than in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who had no form or beauty that we would look upon him, that here comes this king, and yet he's in swaddling clothes. Here comes this king, and yet he's rejected by his own. Here comes this mighty, conquering king, and yet he suffers the shameful, agonizing, humiliating death at the hand of his enemies. And all of it according to God's predetermined plan. And so that it might be exactly as Paul says in Romans. The kingdom of God does not depend on human will, does not depend on exertion, does not depend upon noble birth, but on God who has mercy. And so as we close, let's close the circle on the question that this entire section hinges upon. And that is, how is it that we are joined to the living? You could state it negatively. If we are not joined to the living, then the entire book of Ecclesiastes just falls to the ground. If we are not joined to the living, then death has the final word and the last laugh. That's why Paul goes as far as to say what we read earlier. If Christ is not raised, then your faith really is futile and you are without hope in the world. There's no one living for you to be joined to. For death happens to us all, even and especially death happens to Jesus Christ. But the death that happened to him could not hold him down. It could not keep him down. That God vindicated him, declaring him to be perfectly righteous, and as he is the first fruit of all our salvation, everyone who is joined to him goes where he goes, to heaven above with everlasting life. And so friends, just ask yourself that simple question, do I have the hope of the living? The hope of the living one who is Jesus Christ. And if you have that hope, Solomon says, go, eat your bread with a merry heart because God has already approved what you do in Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we praise you that here we are as sinners and yet we have been approved by you. We praise you for how that is so, because the Lord Jesus Christ gave himself up for us as the perfect once-for-all sacrifice, that he died the death of a condemned sinner, but he was vindicated on high, far above all rule, authority, power, and dominion. And we praise you that all those who are joined to him have the hope of the living. And so we pray, Father, that hope would not just be an empty word to us, that we would go forth truly living out of the hope that Christ himself has purchased for us, and we would do so for your glory. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.