| Issues: On his relentless search for the meaning of existence, Ecclesiastes discovers a dreadful obstacle in his path. He finds that only in reckoning with the reality of death can we truly enter into the fullness of life. TAKING NO CHANCES that his message might be misunderstood or misapplied, Ecclesiastes takes us on a long journey to explore various avenues to find the key to life’s meaning. But we discover that only in the God of life does it make any sense to engage in the pleasures of life. Only in God is there sufficient motive to work, save, study, compete, and whatever else engages our attention along the treadmill of life. To be ultimately meaningful, all the activities of life must converge in the God of the Bible, thereby enhancing our enjoyment and service of him. But even after he brings us to this conclusion, a residual doubt lingers in Ecclesiastes�?mind—doubt that focuses on one final, significant issue. If there is anything that could obviate or contradict all he has concluded thus far, this issue is it. Throughout his sermon, the Preacher has dropped hints that he does not quite know what to do with this issue. But it is not until chapter 9 that he summons enough courage to address the matter head-on, finally tackling this nemesis that has plagued him for so long: the cold hard fact of death. The Preacher does a masterful job of reckoning with the issue of death. Is it the great spoiler of all he described? Does it really vitiate our search for ultimate meaning? Is it the Grinch who steals the significance of life? Such questions confront Ecclesiastes because he knows that he himself is on the road to the hallowed ground of death. We can divide the Preacher’s consideration of death into two parts. He looks first at the future prospect of death ( Ecclesiastes 9:16 ), and then turns to how death’s certainty should affect us now ( Ecclesiastes 9:7-10 ). THE UNIVERSAL DESTINY Many of us are uncomfortable with the subject of death. Our hesitancy is expressed well by Walter Kaufmann in The Faith of a Heretic: we regularly emphasize the accidental cause of death, the mishap, the disease, the infection, the advanced age—and thus betray our eagerness to demote death from a necessity to a mere accident. Then there are those trusting souls who go beyond a mere hesitancy toward death. They scoff at it altogether. C.S. Lewis told of an occasion when his wife asked a friend whether she had ever thought of death. The friend replied, “Oh, no. By the time I reach that age, science will have done something about it.�?/DIV> Ecclesiastes says that we must neither be hesitant about death, nor scoff at it. Rather, we should talk about it forthrightly, for it is the inevitable prospect we all face, and its effects will be devastating if we are unprepared. “The same destiny overtakes all�?( Ecclesiastes 9:3 ), he warns, and that destiny is death. As George Bernard noted with pallid realism, “The statistics on death are quite impressive: one out of one people die.�?/DIV> One of the films from my teenage years is Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? It begins with the main character, Harry Kellerman, sitting on the roof of a dilapidated building, writing a suicide note. He writes, “There was a time when I thought I would live forever. But I found it necessary to change those plans.�?/DIV> Far too many of us are like Harry Kellemman. We tend to assume we’ll live forever. Death is seldom on our list of things to think about, especially if we’re young and in good health, with lofty goals for the future. Ecclesiastes wants us to change, however, and to recognize that we all live under the ubiquitous umbrella of death. As we do, he wants us to ask, What meaning does life really have? Does death cancel even the possibility of ultimate meaning? Why should we struggle and toil if it will all end in death anyway? In light of what Ecclesiastes has said, I think it would not be contradicting him to suggest that twice a week for the rest of our lives we ought to begin the day by looking in the mirror and saying, “I am going to die someday—maybe today.�?What a difference that could make in our lives! As we have come to expect, Ecclesiastes doesn’t leave his questions unanswered. His resounding response in Ecclesiastes 9:7-10 is an insistence that the expectation of death should produce certain enduring attributes in our lives. The fact that we will die should affect the way that we live. Ecclesiastes employs the brevity of life as a spur to coax us onward.  JOY When you look in the mirror and remind yourself that you are going to die someday, that really ought to bring a smile to your lips. Not, of course, because you are going to die, but because you presently possess the gift of life from God, and because in this life God favors what you do. Death is in the future, so there is time now to serve God joyfully in everything: “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do�?( Ecclesiastes 9:7 ). The Hebrews knew joy perhaps better than any culture. In the Old Testament, there are no less than ten different words for “joy.�?In Psalm 118:24 we read, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.�?We are also told that the Lord himself is a God of joy ( Psalm 104:31 , Zephaniah 3:17 ), and so we are admonished, “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength�?( Nehemiah 8:10 ). What is the level of joy in your life? This may be altogether different from your level of happiness. One of the most respected pastors in America preaches a sermon that he calls “The Four Spiritual Flaws.�?Flaw number one, he says, is that God wants you to have a happy life. That assumption is not a biblical idea. God is far more concerned with your level of obedience and faithfulness—the true causes of joy—than with your level of happiness. Martyn Lloyd-Jones longed to see the church filled with the joy of the Lord. He said, I believe that the greatest need of the hour is a revived and joyful church. There can be little doubt but that the exuberant joy of the early Christians was one of the most potent factors in the spread of Christianity. Joy is a deep sense of fulfillment, completion, usefulness, and importance. It is an enduring sensation, an overriding notion that God is in control and that my faith in him brings ultimate victory and vindication. Joy is unleashed in our lives through the Holy Spirit as he empowers and controls us. It is a divine bestowal, a gift from God. It was announced by the angel to the shepherds at Christ’s birth, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.�?If you do not know Jesus Christ personally as your Lord and Savior, you do not know the joy Ecclesiastes commends. Joy is God’s gift to all who turn their lives over to him and ask him for forgiveness. PURITY The Preacher now moves on to a second quality that should characterize our lives in light of our impending death—the attribute of purity: “Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil�?( Ecclesiastes 9:8 ). In Scripture, wearing white symbolizes one’s purity. God commanded his people to maintain purity from the very beginning. “I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.�?The Christian faith and a pure lifestyle go hand-in-hand. As the apostle Paul reminded us in Ephesians 5 , Jesus Christ is in the process of presenting the church to himself “in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.�?/DIV> Purity—what an increasingly elusive quality in our world today. How often were you tempted this past week to engage yourself in some sort of impurity? Perhaps the lure was lust or even adultery, or some cheap and tawdry amusement—the compromise of your integrity for a short-term gain. The temptations are great and numerous. But God’s firm instruction is to not give in, to not succumb to the way of this world. There are no easy, fail-safe methods for maintaining our purity. Nevertheless, there are three basic suggestions I have found helpful in this area. 1. Repent, and stop feeding impurity. Acknowledge whatever impurity may be plaguing your life, and confess it before God. Claim his mercy, forgiveness, and restoration through the blood of Christ. Then change your mind regarding the impurity by determining to stop feeding it. This means positive action: getting rid of salacious books and magazines, not participating in questionable entertainments, selecting new friends who will enhance your purity rather than efface it. 2. Count the cost of impurity. Sexual impurity is a sin against your own body ( 1 Corinthians 6:18 ). We must ask ourselves if a little sensual excitement is really worth the gradual, inexorable deterioration of our own self-respect and freedom. 3. Draw near to God The Lord tells us that we resist the devil as we draw near and submit ourselves to God ( James 4:7 ). Amazing, isn’t it, that maintaining our purity is connected with such a basic issue in the Christian life as getting alone with God each day? One of the giants of the faith in this century was the late Frank Gaebelein. After a long life of distinguished service for his Lord, Dr. Gaebelein was asked what he found to be the greatest stimulus to his own spiritual development over all those years. His answer surprised, yet pleased me: his daily appointment with God for prayer and personal Bible study. He simply came back to the basic ingredient of personal time with God each day as being the most significant molding influence in his life. EARNESTNESS Joy and purity are the first two attributes that ought to characterize our lives in light of our inevitable death. Ecclesiastes also offers a third: earnestness. The fact that our days are numbered ought to motivate us to live earnestly for God. Jesus remarked to his disciples, “As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work�?( John 9:4 ). In light of the brevity of life, we must live with seriousness, recognizing the importance of a life well invested. For Ecclesiastes, the greatest shame is a life poorly invested. Life is worth living only when it is lived with earnestness. Never does the Preacher advocate a supine attitude toward living, drifting along or doing nothing on the claim that it avails nothing. Rather, he is convinced that life is to be lived with gusto before it is gone ( Ecclesiastes 9:9-10 ). Christians ought to enjoy life more than anyone else—though certainly their enjoyment will have a different source than that of the world. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom ( Ecclesiastes 9:10 ). What plow have you put your hand to? Perhaps you are a student. Living earnestly means giving yourself wholeheartedly to studying. You will discover that being an earnest student offers you a unique privilege to love and enjoy God more fully and to serve him more effectively. Or perhaps you are a mother at home all day with children. Ecclesiastes says, Tackle that opportunity with earnestness. Realize that the time you spend building into the children’s lives is an important part of your day. Maybe you find yourself unemployed. Are you earnestly unemployed, making the most of the opportunity God has given? Remember: you may not be happily unemployed, but you can be joyfully and earnestly unemployed. Ecclesiastes leaves us with the fact that life is real and death is real, and the boundaries of both are prescribed by God. As one writer put it, “Time is a totally inelastic quantity. It cannot be added to; it cannot be changed; it cannot be subtracted from; it cannot be stretched or shrunk; and it cannot be saved!�?/DIV> The only option you have with your time is how you will invest it. Ecclesiastes suggests that we are investing it wisely only when we infuse it with joy, purity, and earnestness. We must not push death out, deceiving ourselves into thinking that life on earth, as we know it, is endless. Our days are short, and now is the time that God favors. In an interview not long before his own death, C.S. Lewis said, The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though the world would last a hundred years. I think Ecclesiastes would say “Amen�?to that, and then remind us again that we must do our duty with a heart of joy, a lifestyle of purity, and an attitude of earnestness. He would tell us that life consists of more than wealth, wisdom, pleasure, power, health, and happiness. Certainly these things are gifts from God that we should enjoy. But if we impute ultimate importance to any of them, we will come up woefully short in life and be bitterly disappointed with the end product. God’s gifts are spokes in the wheel of life. They fit beautifully as spokes, but they were never meant to be the hub of the wheel. No, at the hub of the wheel—the center of life—these gifts become powerful distractions, keeping us from the true center of life. And what is the true center of life? Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. ( Ecclesiastes 11:13 ) We must not try to detour death, or else we will in many ways be detouring life. We are called, after all our exploring, to reverence and obey God. Nothing, absolutely nothing, should usurp his place at the center of life.
About the Author Gary D. Preston is a pastor at Bear Valley Baptist Church in Denver. He is former pastor of the International Chapel of Vienna.
On Your Own On Your Own: Death and Resurrection Looking Into Scripture It is tempting for a Christian to dismiss Ecclesiastes�?gloom and doom about death with Paul’s triumphant quotation of Hosea, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?�?( 1 Corinthians 15:55 ; see Hosea 13:14 ). The hope of resurrection—the promise that death is not the end—does put Ecclesiastes�?words in perspective, but what perspective? If death has been conquered, is it now irrelevant? 1. Look at Mark 14:35-36 , Mark 14:47 . How did Jesus view his coming death? What support did his disciples give? Did they accept his death? 2. Read John 11:33-38 . How did Jesus feel about Lazarus�?death, even though he knew that his friend would rise? 3. Several times before his crucifixion, Jesus tried to discuss his death with his disciples. The subject dismayed them because they expected at least a facade of immortality from the Messiah. Look at Mark 8:31-33 and Mark 9:31-32 . How prepared was Jesus for his own death? Why? Why were the disciples so uncomfortable with the subject of their leader’s death? Why did Jesus want to discuss it beforehand? 4. Read Philippians 1:20-26 . What was Paul’s attitude about his death? Did he wish to die? Did he fear it? How did the knowledge of inevitable death affect how he viewed his life? 5. Read 2 Timothy 4:6-9 . In his last years, what made Paul able to face his coming death in peace? How had the inevitability of death and the certainty of resurrection affected his life in the world? Why was he able to talk about his death so easily? |
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