“Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil…” Truly! Oh, how the truth hurts, eh? “…And after that they go to the dead.”
I am reminded of Romans 7, that well-known chapter in which Paul describes the struggle between his flesh and his new nature. Saved but still sinners are we! Declared righteous but still living unrighteously. Paul finally concedes in Romans 7:24, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
Without the explanation offered in the first verse of Ecclesiastes 9, the following verses would have an entirely different, hopeless meaning from what they actually do.
Ecclesiastes 9:1 ends by saying, “People know neither love nor hatred by anything they see before them.”
Verse 2 says, “All things come alike to all: one event happens to the righteous and the wicked…As is the good, so is the sinner.”
Hmmm…hard to find much encouragement for life in this passage: “There is a vanity which occurs on earth…I commended enjoyment, because a man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry…a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun…though a wise man attempts to know it, he will not be able to find it.”
O how easily men are forgotten, eh? “Then I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of holiness, and they were forgotten
Isn’t it great to be under the control of a sovereign God? All that we can see is the present and part of the past, but the future requires trust, patience, and contentment.
Ecclesiastes 8:6-8 says, “Because for every matter there is a time and judgment, though the misery of man increases greatly. For he does not know what will happen; so who can tell him when it will occur? No one has power over the spirit to retain the spirit, and no one has power in the day of death. There is no release from that war, and wickedness will not deliver those who are given to it.”
What should I write about next? Are there issues that you are facing or that the church is facing today that need to be addressed? Take 15 seconds to let me know!
