Ecclesiastes 9-11:6
Main points
* The great equaliser of death – death inescapable, regardless of righteousness, wickedness, wealth, poverty, religious, irreligious.
* Life is better than death, but only because where there is life there is hope.
* Wisdom is better than folly, but it's incredible how a little folly can undo so much wisdom.
* Wisdom is better than folly, but wisdom unheeded is worthless, and this happens often.
* Wisdom is better than folly, but the wise and the fool both end up dead, and no-one can see what will happen tomorrow.
* So get out there and live, take risks, don't let life's uncertainty stop you.
* Something about politics... (9:13-18 [wisdom not heeded/remembered], 10:5-7[improper people as rulers], 16-17 [improper actions of rulers], 20 [power of rulers against people])
Fact: Life will ultimately end in death. Temporal things are therefore meaningless. There is no certainty to life.
Question: So what is the meaning of life if we all die and there is no certainty?
Application: The fact of uncertainty should not lead us to despair or desperate clutching to pleasure. It should drive us to acknowledge life for what it is, and strive to enjoy life as gifted to us by God.
Words
In 1949 on Edwards Air Force Base in the United States, an engineer was working on Project MX981, which was a deceleration track designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can withstand in a crash. One day, the engineer found a transducer that had been wired improperly, and cursed the technician responsible, saying, “If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it.” That engineer's name was Captain Edward A Murphy. A doctor by the name of Colonel John Paul Stapp, who rode the sled on the deceleration track and survived a stopping force of 40Gs, gave a press conference and said that their good safety record was due to a firm belief in Captain Murphy's Law, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”, and in the necessity to try and circumvent it.
Of course, Captain Murphy merely put words to a law that has been known by mankind for all time. I found online a list of sublaws to Murphy's Law, which are born out of the experiences of people all over the world, and I'm sure they will resonate with you. They include such things as:
If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong – at the most inopportune time, and it will be your fault, and everyone will know it.
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the FIRST to go wrong.
When something goes wrong, things will be damaged in direct proportion to their value.
After you bought a replacement for something you've lost and searched for everywhere, you'll find the original.
No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
When a broken appliance is demonstrated to a repairman, it will work perfectly.
The file you are looking for is always at the bottom of the largest pile.
Your best golf shots always occur when playing alone.
The worst golf shots always occur when playing with someone you are trying to impress.
Traffic is inversely proportional to how late you are, or how late you're going to be.
Paper is always strongest at its perforation.
Mud that won't come off on a doormat immediately adheres to carpet.
You will find an easy way to do something, after you've finished doing it.
Wind velocity increases proportional to the cost of your hairdo.
A valuable falling in a hard to reach place will be exactly at the distance of the tip of your fingers.
If a valuable falls in a hard to reach place at a distance shorter than the tip of your fingers, as soon as you try to reach it you'll push it to that distance.
The more urgent the need for a decision to be made, less apparent becomes the identity of the decision maker.
Behind every little problem there's a larger problem, waiting for the little problem to get out of the way.
If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
Murphy's law is a way of stating a truth that we all know – life has one certainty: that it's full of uncertainty. And then you die. But a couple of thousand years before Captain Edward Murphy, the author of Ecclesiastes put this very idea down on paper, and we find it in the Bible, expressed very strongly in chapters 9 and 10, and over into chapter 11 as well. Over the last few weeks, Martin has been taking us through the thought patterns of Ecclesiastes, showing us what it has to say about some of the biggest contenders in the contest for the question What Is Life All About? Is life all about pleasure? The answer appears to be no. Is it about money, possessions, or religious observance? Seems not. Nor is life merely a question of fate, or about living a life of balance. All of these things seem to end up being meaningless, or vanity – insubstantial, ultimately unsatisfactory.
The traveller on the road of Ecclesiastes, still heading towards an answer to the question 'What is life?', has left a lot of stuff by the wayside. When the author started on this road, he had everything a man can have. But, like a wanderer in the desert searching for an oasis, as the sun gets hotter and the day gets longer, he discards those things which are meaningless to his search. Golf clubs, massage machine, mp3 player, plane tickets to Las Vegas – the pleasure they bring is fleeting, useless on his search. Cash, credit cards, keys to the Ferrari, title deed to the mansion – his money and possessions , what good are they in this desert? His church song book, his tithe, his cross pendant, the years of attending church at Christmas and Easter – his religious observances don't sate the thirst. Things have been discarded left and right, leaving a trail behind him as he searches desperately for the cool oasis of meaning in the desert of meaninglessness. Now, in chapters 9 and 10, the author looks at what he's got left – his own mind, and life itself. As he tramps slowly over another sand dune, he thinks about his life, and what he has done. And he realises, “All that I've done, all that anyone has done - “the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them. All share a common destiny. This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all.” That's verses 2 and 3 of chapter 9.
You see, in the end, everybody dies. Bad people die, good people die. Everybody dies. All share a common destiny under the sun. The traveller on the road to meaning might think, “Well, if that's the case, why bother even walking this road?” - that's the futility of fatalism that Martin spoke of a couple of weeks ago. But no, we've discarded fatalism on the side of the road too. There is hope in life, says Ecclesiastes in chapter 9 verse 4, “Anyone who is among the living has hope – even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!” So life, he thinks, holds some hope. And considering what life is not about, there are only a few options left to choose from. So he now turns his mind to power, politics and to wisdom. These topics are hard to disentangle from one another. Perhaps life is all about gaining authority over others, or gaining wisdom, knowledge, intelligence, learning, and using it to lead others? Reaching the pinnacle of knowledge and wisdom, and using it to attain the highest positions of political leadership, that must be the answer.
And so the author casts his mind about, thinking as he often does about the absolute pinnacle of this new path. For surely if wisdom is the path to meaning in life, if wisdom is what it's all about, then those who are the wisest in the land will be those who have found meaning. And surely the wisest people are the leaders, whose words and actions seal the fate of whole nations of people, hundreds of thousands, millions of lives at their disposal. But the more this idea is explored, the more it shows itself to be just another failure. He looks about, and he sees that first of all that the wrong people so often end up in positions of leadership. Chapter 10 vs 5, “There is an evil I have seen under the sun, the sort of error that arises from a ruler: Fools are put in many high positions, while the rich occupy the low ones. I have seen slaves on horseback, while princes go on foot like slaves.”
Back in these days, kings and rulers were chosen usually by hereditary links – that is the son of the last ruler - or otherwise by whoever had the strongest army or the most money. In the eyes of Ecclesiastes, this does not mean that the best person gets the job. You might have a good king whose son goes off the tracks, or who just isn't very good at leading. Or you might have a powerful person who doesn't have any children, and all their inheritance, including their position, falls to their slave. Abraham was worried about this when he had no son. You might have someone with a huge army, or a big bank account, and they don't want a wise or strong leader, they want a weak leader they can push around, someone who will always say yes to them, regardless of how bad their decisions are. Now today ,we don't choose leaders based on family – instead, we vote them in based on how popular they are, and how well they will pander to the desires of the majority, and how much they can spend on advertising. “We'll stop refugees from coming to Australia!” “Yeah, well we'll stop them faster, with bigger guns!” Or, as we've seen lately, we don't vote them in at all – it's actually the political parties that choose who their leader is. And they don't choose the smartest, brightest, wisest, fairest, most even-handed person, most fit to be leader. No, they choose the person most likely to win them the next election, most likely to get them to power or keep them in power.
However, not only does Ecclesiastes' author realise that the wrong people so often get into power, but he also sees that when they get into power, they make foolish decisions and act improperly. He says in chapter 10 verse 16, “Woe to the land whose king was a servant and whose princes feast in the morning. Blessed is the land whose king is of noble birth and whose princes eat at a proper time – for strength and not for drunkenness.” Now you might have noticed here that this is the second time the author has said that a slave or servant shouldn't be in power, and that it should be left to people of nobility or the social upper class. This was common thinking for several thousand years, and shows the author to be a person of his time. But this verse also shows that the attitude was not baseless, or based purely on discrimination against the low classes. The fact was that those who sprung suddenly to power from poverty, who suddenly went from slavery to sovereignty, were very likely to waste their time in the new-found pleasures of their station – eating, drinking, throwing parties, hobnobbing with important people and celebrities – rather than taking seriously the responsibilities of their rule. Feast in the morning, and you're drunk all day, and useless. Eat at the proper time, and you are seeking to make yourself strong, to help protect and serve your people – one of the fundamental responsibilities of political leadership.
In Australia you might think we're miles ahead of Ecclesiastes when it comes to recognising the futility of political leadership. We have an inbuilt distrust for politicians. We instantly assume they're lying, or spin-doctoring, or telling half truths. When Tony Abbott came clean and said that not everything he says can be taken as “gospel truth”, one prevailing attitude in response by voters was that it was refreshing to have a politician admit it for a change – the assumption being that they all lie, whether they say so or not. But what the author of Ecclesiastes is getting at is how can political power and leadership be the meaning of life, if there are so many instances of political leaders being the wrong people, in it for the wrong reasons, making the wrong choices? No doubt this lesson was also painfully clear to the people of Israel, who had seen that even their best leaders – like David – had not been perfect, and their work could not last forever. Eventually, they would be overtaken by another, and there was no way of knowing whether the next ruler in line would be a good king or an evil king.
So the quest for power is meaningless. But what of wisdom? Surely wisdom, knowledge and learning are valuable, so perhaps they alone are the key to meaning in life? This belief is very strong in the world today. “If only we can educate people better, then all of our problems will be solved,” is the catch cry of many people, usually university educated themselves, and perhaps unsurprisingly usually working in the field of education. Whether it's sicknesses that need cures – educate more doctors! - or problems with climate change– educate more environmental scientists! - or even social problems like discrimination and war – just educate people more, teach them more about their enemies, and they won't fight any more! There are lots of people saying “just a bit more education, and everything else will sort itself out.” I suppose we shouldn't be surprised when we hear these same people saying, “Just educate people a bit more, and they'll realise they don't need God or religion any more!” Because of course if education is the solution to every problem, then suddenly we don't need God, because we've solved the problem ourselves.
And yet even Solomon, wisest of all men, could not be trusted to lead God's people according to God's will. This doesn't bode well for wisdom being the meaning of life, does it? What the author of Ecclesiastes has discovered, in fact, is that there are some good things about learning, and wisdom, and knowledge. Just as he has come to the conclusion that wealth is better than poverty – but that doesn't make wealth the meaning of life; and that pleasure is better than pain – but that doesn't make pleasure the meaning of life; so he discovers that wisdom is better than foolishness – but that doesn't make wisdom the meaning of life. Wisdom - like pleasure, like wealth – is limited in what it can achieve. So we are told in Ecclesiastes first of all that wisdom is better than foolishness – but only if it is heeded. Look at chapter 9 vs 13, “I also saw under the sun this example of wisdom that greatly impressed me: There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it. Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man. So I said, "Wisdom is better than strength." But the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are no longer heeded. The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools.”
Already we find that wisdom is stronger than political power, because a wise man can defeat a powerful man and his army. But the problem with wisdom is that so often people don't listen to it, or they don't remember it! The old saying is that “history repeats itself”, and the reason it does is because we don't learn from our mistakes. Humanity on the whole seems to be unteachable, or at the very least has no long term memory. Second of all, we are told that wisdom is better than foolishness – but it's amazing how even the greatest wisdom can be undone by just a little bit of foolishness. As we keep reading from chapter 9 verse 18, and into chapter 10, we see this stated, “Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good. As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as fools walk along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are.”
Have you noticed this in life? No matter how much good people do, no matter how smartly something is done, all it takes is one foolish thing, and it can bring a whole stack of good deeds and works tumbling down. There's a saying that goes, “It is impossible to build something that is foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.” Think about trust in a relationship, like a marriage – years of marital faithfulness can be destroyed in a single instant of adultery. You don't say, “Oh well, that's okay. We'll give you three strikes, and that's your first one.” One slip up is enough to destroy the trust built up over years.
Later on in verse 15 it says, “The toil of fools wearies them; they do not know the way to town.” Even when fools try and smarten themselves up, even when they try and do the right thing, try and work hard and live right and follow wisdom, the fact is that they're still a fool. The effort just wearies them, and at the end of the day, they still can't even find their way home.
The author freely acknowledges that there is hope in life, but he says that it won't come from any skill or talent that we have. He says in chapter 9 verse 11, “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favour to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.” No matter how well we prepare, no matter the skill and proficiency we may have, whether we are prime minister or the wisest man on earth, we cannot control our own destinies. There are always things out of our control, and evil times can befall even the greatest person, and even the wisest man may die. He says in chapter 10 vs 8, “Whoever digs a pit may fall into it; whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake. Whoever quarries stones may be injured by them; whoever splits logs may be endangered by them,” showing just how dicey life can be, even in what were everyday activities.
Col Stapp, who rode Captain Murphy's deceleration sled, was famous for his own saying, known as Stapp's ironical paradox, which says “The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle.” And it is this statement, interestingly, that reflects exactly the attitude that the author of Ecclesiastes comes to after making these discoveries that neither political power, nor wisdom, nor any skill or talent of humanity ultimately contends for the meaning of life.
We find our wanderer standing, baffled, in the desert, the oasis of meaning still tantalisingly out of sight. He's ditched pleasure, wealth, possessions, religious trappings, power, wisdom, or anything that he can possibly accomplish, and left them on the hot sands of the desert of meaninglessness. There are only two options left to him. Does he simply sink onto the sand and die? No, he can't – such fatalism he has already discarded into the sands. He can only continue forward, hoping that the oasis of meaning awaits him, that each step he takes will lead him to his destination.
This is the position that we find ourselves in at the end of Ecclesiastes 10 and the beginning of Ecclesiastes 11. The author has found the mystery of life still unsolvable, but that does not cause him to tell us to sink to the ground, to just give up and die. No, rather, he says this in chapter 11 verse 1, “Ship your grain across the sea; after many days you may receive a return. Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land. If clouds are full of water, they pour rain on the earth. Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there it will lie. Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap. As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.”
The fact is that things happen that are out of our control every day. Whether it's the weather, or some sort of natural calamity, or a man-made catastrophe, we usually can't even predict that it's going to happen. We can't even predict with accuracy whether a tree will fall to the north or the south. And even if we can predict it, there's not really a lot we can do about it. If you wait for the perfect time to do anything, all you will ever do is wait. The important thing, then, is to get out there and do things, to be active, to live the life that God has given you, and to leave things that are out of our control in his control. We cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things, but we can actually achieve things and live a full life, if we accept that God has it in his hands to make our work fruitful.
In chapter 9 verse 7 it says, “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. 8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. (those are both signs of enjoyment, you wore white and anointed yourself with oil on festive occasions.) 9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun — all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.”
We only have one life to live. When you think about it, we are lucky to even have that. It is only through God's grace that we are alive at all. So we should live the life we have to live, as long as we've got to live it.
But what of our wanderer? He's just discarded all his wealth, his possessions, his pleasure, his power, his politics, his wisdom and his wherewithal, as all are unable to answer the question What is Life. With this discovery that there is nothing he can do but live his life, what does he do? Does he turn back from the oasis, pick all these things back up again, and just accept that life is meaningless, that this is as good as it gets, that he should just enjoy what he's got while he's got it? No, that's not what he does at all. In fact, as his eyes widen, he begins to scramble forward, running, because now, with all of these things behind him, he has finally caught a glimpse of what he is looking for. He has seen, shimmering in the distance, the cool waters of the oasis of meaning. For our wanderer has discovered that, through the discarding of all those things which did not bring ultimate satisfaction, through the pursuit of meaning and the discovery that it is outside his reach, he has glimpsed something of the answer to what life really is about. Because he has discovered that although he cannot know what happens in his life, God knows. He has realised that even though he cannot even determine whether he will gain pleasure or enjoyment out of the things of life, God can determine it. He has found that while he does not have any control over what happens in his life, God does have control. In these discoveries, we see the shimmering of hope of an answer to the meaning of life. And we will look at it in its completeness next week.
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Oh, spambot, you flatter me so.
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