"GOD’S CONTROL OF ALL THINGS GIVES REASON TO ENJOY LIFE."

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 27:5,6
Psalm 66:4,5
Psalm 37:12,13
Psalm 62:1,2,3
Hymn 49:1,2

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

There are verses in the passage we read together this morning that touch us in the right place. I think, for example, of 8:15: "I commended enjoyment, because a man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry." A night on the town: even Scripture says it’s a good thing! The same message comes through in 9:7: "Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; For God has already accepted your works." And vs 8 takes the matter further than food and drink: "Let your garments always be white, And let your head lack no oil." That is: dress well, find the best in perfumes and odors and body oils. And for the newly married and the not so newly married there’s the happy encouragement of vs 9: "Live joyfully with the wife whom you love…." Yes, the chapter touches us in the right place: Solomon encourages pleasure in foods, pleasure in dressing well, pleasure in marriage, pleasure in life. It all helps to soothe our consciences as we keep enjoying the pleasures of our prosperous times.

But what, congregation, is the reality? Not all have received the gift of marriage, some have lost the gift of marriage already, and others who are married just cannot enjoy it…. What are they to do with vs 9?! And while we can perhaps eat our bread with joy and drink our wine with a merry heart, what about the millions of Christians of this world who have no clue where this evening’s meal is to come from – let alone a bottle of wine? In fact, we see some of the pictures coming out of the Sudan, and somehow our food doesn’t taste the same anymore – there’s something so unfair in our gross abundance and their extreme poverty. Go, then, and eat your bread with joy? It almost sounds sarcastic….

Solomon, brothers and sisters, is still busy with the big questions of life, trying to teach the people before him how to live in a world of brokenness, of vanity, of senselessness. He’s covered considerable territory in the previous chapters, and now, in 8:1-9:12, he takes his argument further. The kernel of his argument in the passage we read is vs 17: "I saw all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun." And exactly because a man cannot find out that work, Solomon counsels the response I mentioned before: enjoy, enjoy your life, your food, your clothes, your marriage. Yet it’s not a fatalistic enjoyment he counsels; he counsels instead an enjoyment rooted in trust, in accepting the fact that all things are safe in the hands of God.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

Solomon –vs 16- applied his heart "to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth." All the ups and downs of life, the big things of the newspapers and the little things of the home: he tried to find the common thread that made sense of it all. It’s something he’s been busy with since the beginning of the book (cf 1:13), and now states he’s conclusion: "Then I saw," he says in our text, "then I saw all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun." That’s his conclusion. All that happens under the sun, the golden thread that ties it all together, that makes sense of it all: it’s "the work of God." But: that work is beyond human understanding….

We need to come to grips with how Solomon comes to the conclusion of our text. He speaks of "the work of God", and that’s a reference to the things God has done and continues to do. In our text the phrase is specifically a reference to God’s upholding the creation He made. This God, Solomon knows, is sovereign, the almighty; all things, then, come from His almighty hand (Lord’s Day 10). But exactly that sovereign control gave rise to so many questions. For so many crooked things happen in this life! Chap 3: there a time to give birth and there’s a time to die, there’s a time to kill and a time to heal, there’s a time to weep and a time to laugh. Good things, bad things: that’s life, and all comes from the hands of a sovereign God. The good and the bad: sometimes it strikes us as fair, and other times as not fair. In fact, as one looks around one sees so much that’s unfair, unjust; Solomon has touched on various examples in his earlier chapters (cf 2:21f; 3:16,19; 4:1,13ff). How tempting to come to God with your demands to know the whys and wherefores for it all! But Solomon knows: to come to God with your demands is not in place. Hence his instruction of 5:1: "Watch your step when you go to the house of God." And his instruction of 6:10: it is not for a man –clay (cf Gen 2)- to criticize God; we cannot contend with Him who is mightier than we. But what then of the crookedness of life? How do you cope with that? Solomon had given his answer in 7:13: "Consider the work of God; for who can make straight what He has made crooked?" That was, you recall, a reference to Gen 3, to God’s response to our fall into sin, how the Lord ordained for man a life outside of Paradise, a life of strife and tears and brokenness and injustice. God made it crooked, for He is sovereign. But God would also straighten things out, for He ordained that the strife and enmity of Gen 3 would be the road to redemption for God’s people; the Seed of the woman would crush the seed of the serpent (cf Ecclesiastes 7:28). This God is sovereign, this God has ordained crookedness, and this God would straighten it out.

For our part, congregation, we find that line of thought as we found it in the previous chapters comforting and encouraging. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that we live in this life, with a brokenness that continues. We confront that brokenness and crookedness every day, and always the question throws itself at us: how do you cope with the tension in your marriage, how do you respond to the brokenness at work, how do you live with the ailments that weigh you down? Solomon had the same struggle, and the people congregated around him to hear his instruction had that struggle too. We know that the Lord will fix all things up one day, and then there shall be no more tears or pain or struggle anymore (Rev 21). But how do I concretely handle my broken marriage now? What do I do about the strife with my brother? How am I to respond to the fact that I can scarcely make my payments? All these troubles, all this brokenness: it is all "the work of God," His hand is behind it all. How do I work concretely with the fact that He puts crookedness in my life?! That is the question Solomon addresses in the passage we read today.

To open up this chapter with you, congregation, I am going to ask your attention for Genesis 4. In previous chapters Solomon was busy with Gen 2 and Gen 3. He’d said in Ecclesiastes 6:10 that man –clay- was not to criticize God – and that’s a comment built on data Solomon gleaned from Gen 2, that portion of Scripture that relates how God made man. He’d said in Ecclesiastes 7:13 that God had made things crooked, and that’s a comment built on the material of Gen 3, where God gives His response to our fall into sin. He’d said in Ecclesiastes 7:28 that there was one acceptable man among a thousand but no woman, and that was a reference to Gen 3:15, how the Seed (male) of the woman would prevail over the seed of the serpent. Well now, with the chapter before us today Solomon is busy with Gen 4, that first chapter after the fall into sin that describes the actual strife and crookedness of life outside Paradise.

You know the chapter. Two sons were born to Adam and Eve, one who loved the Lord and the other who did not. God had spoken of strife in Gen 3, and announced that the Seed of the woman would crush the seed of the serpent, and that’s to say that the Good would triumph over the Bad. But the day came when Adam and Eve found their good son dead, and their bad son gone…. You can see before your eyes, congregation, the grief on the faces of those two parents, the hurt, the confusion: why must life be so broken, why must this happen to us?! Why should the obedient boy die at the hand of the disobedient, the righteous be the victim of the wicked? This is so crooked, so unfair – and contrary to God’s ordinance in Gen 3:15! "Who is like a wise man? And who knows the interpretation of a thing?" Who can explain the whys and wherefores of this injustice?!

Cain the murderous evildoer had children in the generations, and one was a tough named Lamech. He wasn’t content with one wife (despite God’s ordinance); he took two. His whole attitude was one of self-aggrandizement: I am king, and none shall touch me. How is God’s child to survive with such bullies around?! This is the question of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 8:2ff: "Keep the king’s command…." Respect him. Try to correct him, oppose him, straighten out the things he does crookedly? Says Solomon (vs 5): "a wise man’s heart discerns both time and judgment, because for every matter there is a time and a judgment." That is: bide your time, things will sort themselves out. But don’t fight against the wind (vs 8a; spirit = wind); that’s futile. Things will sort themselves out –why?- because the Lord God is sovereign; He remains at work even in the crookedness of Gen 4. See only how that chapter ends, with Adam and Eve receiving another child and calling his name Seth (=appointed). For –Adam and Eve knew it- God kept working, and so He appointed another godly child to replace the one the ungodly killed.

And what’s become of Cain in the long run? Sure, he received a son, and then built a city which he named after his son – Enoch. But what’s become of the city? What’s left of this memorial to this first murderer? Do you know where it is? The city is gone…, and the murderer is remembered no more by his own offspring; only the Word of God tells us yet about this murderer. You see, here’s vs 10 of our chapter: "Then I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of holiness, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done." Of what value, then, was what Cain had done? Abel was dead, and Cain forgotten…. What a vanity….

God sent Cain away, exiled him from his parental home to a life as a fugitive. That is: God did not kill Cain straightaway for his crime, though death should be his reward (Gen 2:17; 9:6). And what was the fruit of God’s action of letting Cain live? This: his evil continued in his generations; his great-grandson Lamech readily killed a lad for hurting him (Gen 4:23). It’s vs 11: "Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." Hence the big question: why, Lord, why do You let things happen this way?! Sin abounds because justice isn’t done! Vs 12: a sinner does evil a hundred times, and his days are prolonged…. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be! It’s all caught in the words of vs 14: "There is a vanity which occurs on earth, that there are just men to whom it happens according to the work of the wicked; again, there are wicked men to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity." Abel the righteous is dead, while Cain the wicked lives…. Truly, it’s vanity, crooked, senseless…. Lord, why?? If You would destroy the godless, godliness could grow on earth! But now??

And as one looks farther through the pages of Old Testament history, is it not so that one finds so very many examples of the same injustice and unfairness? Noah sought to serve the Lord, and ended up being the focus of public ridicule for 120 years while he built his boat on dry land – while the sinners of his day ate, drank and were merry. Is that straight and fair? Abram left the comforts of Ur of the Chaldeans, his father’s house and family, to go to the land the Lord would give him. Though he lived in Canaan for so many years, he never got the land; he finally had to buy a parcel to bury his wife. Was that a fair and just reward for his righteous? Joseph, still a lad, was sold into Egypt, and there, precisely because he sought to obey and fear the Lord, he spent years and years in prison… - talk about crooked! God said of Israel in Egypt that this was His people – but He let them serve as slaves of the evil Pharaoh year in year out – even let His children by covenant be drowned in the Nile while the murderous Egyptians got away for years with their oppression. Vanity of vanities! I can go on, listing the injustices to the righteous recorded on the pages of Scripture, and listing too the high life the wicked enjoyed. And all the while the Bible is emphatic that the Lord is sovereign over all; all this prosperity of the wicked and all this oppression of the righteous is "the work of God" – He ordains it. And this is the God who decreed that the Seed of the woman would crush the seed of the serpent, that Good would triumph over evil: can you make sense of it all?? What shall a man do: throw in the towel, quit trying to sort it all out, just make the most of this vain life while you have it – as per 8:15: "So I commended enjoyment, because a man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry; for this will remain with him in his labor all the days of his life which God gives him under the sun." Surely, that advice is logical…. Life makes no sense, so make the most of it….

But that, congregation, is not Solomon’s answer! Our text: yes, all is in God’s control – including the crookedness of Gen 4, and the crookedness of Joseph’s life and the crookedness of Israel in Egypt, etc. It is all "the work of God"; Solomon won’t deny it. But now the question is: how are you going to respond to God’s work? Are you going to try to understand God, try to follow His paths through history? To try that is a recipe for frustration. For you’re stuck right away with how come God let Cain kill the first covenant child born on earth who responded to that covenant with faith. And you’re stuck right away with why God would let that first covenant breaker continue to live. How different (we say) things would have turned out for this world if the Lord had killed that covenant breaker, and raised the righteous victim from the dead again! But, says Solomon, it won’t do to follow the mind of God in the way He has led things. For God’s ways are higher than man’s ways, God’s thoughts incomprehensible to man (cf Dt 29:29; Is 55:8f). Vs 17: "a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. For though a man labors to discover it, yet he will not find it." The ways of the Almighty Creator are beyond the understanding of the creature man.

So we come to our second point:

God is sovereign, and travels with His creatures along roads of His choosing. We can’t understand God’s ways, but that takes nothing away from the reality that "the righteous and the wise and their works" –though so much evil may happen to them in this world; think of Abel, Joseph, Israel, etc- "are in the hand of God." The human eye invariably sees good men fall victim to evil things just like anybody else: "All things come 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" (9:2). But the child of God looks beyond the things the eye sees; the child of God believes that he’s in the hand of his Father-by-covenant. And that awareness gives peace.

"The righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God." And this God ensures that "for every matter there is a time and judgment." So: He sets straight what is crooked, at His time. That is why the child of God can roll with the punches of life without getting upset (8:6). Get upset because a king or a strong man or a bully abuses his power? Wear a stern face because of all the injustices that happen? No, says Solomon in 8:1: "a man’s wisdom makes his face shine, and the sternness of his face is changed." For wisdom involves trusting the Lord God, wisdom involves leaving to Him matters you can’t change. All things are in His hands, and He is faithful to His promises of the beginning, and so you can leave the problems of life with Him. Instead of tension and displeasure, let your face shine. Or, in the words of 9:7ff: "Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart…. Let your garments always be white, and let your head lack no oil." Yes, "live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life…." That is: relax and enjoy. The trials and tribulations of life come upon us through the hand of our faithful sovereign God, and He makes no mistake. So: be at peace….

Here, brothers and sisters, is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. All things are in the sovereign control of almighty God; Solomon knows that. And who is this God? In the city of Jerusalem stands that glorious temple Solomon built for God, and in that temple sacrifices are presented daily to God, be it sin offerings or burnt offerings or peace offerings. All those sacrifices –Solomon knew it- were possible precisely because of the pronouncement of Gen 3:15: the Seed of the woman would crush the seed of the serpent. Those sacrifices foreshadowed the glorious day of Christ’s triumph over sin and Satan on the cross of Calvary, that day when the Good would defeat the Bad, the Good would crush the Bad underfoot. Solomon knew: that triumph was sure – even though it was yet years away. Why that triumph had to be years away yet? Why the history of salvation had to travel the road along which it went? Why God’s people had to suffer so much at the hands of evildoers first? Solomon concluded that he did not need answers to all those questions; he needed instead to trust that the Lord God was in control and was making no mistakes in the way He was leading the history of His people and the history of the world. Solomon believed the gospel of the temple, and that gave him comfort and encouragement as he observed all the crookedness of his day and all the injustice recorded in the pages of the Bible he had. Faith, faith in the God of the covenant: that was the key to happiness, to living joyfully in all the trials of this life!

And that, beloved, has not changed over the years. Christ triumphed, defeated Satan; the Good overcame the Bad. But did that mean that the early church saw only good, only peace, only justice? Observe how that church was persecuted, oppressed, torn asunder through the hatred of the world, through the attacks of the devil, and through the abiding weaknesses of its members! The apostle Paul set out to preach, preach, preach, and observe how he was beset by trials and tribulations on every side! Did he in response despair at all the injustice he experienced? Did he deny the reality of Christ’s victory on the cross; after all, the oppression he experienced gave the lie to the gospel of Calvary? No, beloved, no! Instead, the apostle worked with the very conviction Solomon taught in our chapter. All things are in God’s hands, even if we can’t follow His divine logic. All things are in God’s hands, and so "we are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed - always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body" (2 Cor 4:8ff). Christ has triumphed, the victory belongs to the Seed of the woman, and therefore things will always be OK. Paul is certain, and that’s why he can rejoice even in adversity, yes, he can be content whether he be abased or whether he abounds (Phil 4:11f). It’s a question of who do you think your God is.

Here is instruction for us. It’s true: so much happens in our lives that we do not appreciate, that we consider unfair, unjust, crooked. How do you survive? We survive, brothers and sisters, as Adam and Eve did in Gen 4, as Abram did and Joseph and Israel in Egypt – and as Solomon taught Israel in his days. It’s the church’s confession in Lord’s Day 1: in all the ups and downs of life and death, I am comforted in the realization that I belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. This Savior –He bought me with His precious blood- preserves me (never mind my circumstance) in such a way that the Father protects every hair on my head, yes, makes all things work out for my salvation. Need I the creature understand the details of the Creator’s path with me? No, I need not do that. It is sufficient that He gave His Son for me. Truly, in His hands I’m safe – even when I can’t follow the ins and outs of why He goes through life with me as He does.

So, in the midst of life’s big questions, I’ll eat my bread with joy, and I’ll dress myself with flair, and I’ll enjoy the wife the Lord has given. That’s the behavior of the wise man: his conduct reflects the peace in his heart. He knows: he’s safe with his God, his Father-in-Christ. Amen.