Live Joyfully!
by Paul Earnhart
Biblical Insights 14(9) September 2014
The Preacher concluded the eighth chapter with another of his oft-repeated observations that God's ways are inscrutable to men, however wise (Ecclesiastes 8:17). Job, in his misery, twice asks plaintively: "But where can wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?" (Job 28:12, 20). He then answers his own question: "God understands its way, and He knows its place" (Job 28:23). What then are we to do? He answers again: "Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding" (Job 28:28). Only to the degree God has revealed His plan to us can we understand. The rest is shrouded, and for that, we must trust Him. This, too, is Solomon's unchanging answer to his repeated failures to fully grasp the nature of life under the sun.
One of the challenges in studying Ecclesiastes is the little emphasis put on God's benevolent providence for the righteous in all the pain and disappointments to which they are heirs. There is a greater boldness in the New Testament on this subject (Romans 5:1-4; 8:28-39; Hebrews 12:5-11). In Ecclesiastes, this truth is more implicit than stated, but in chapter nine, it briefly surfaces. "For I considered all this [life's mysteries] in my heart," Solomon writes, "so that I could declare it all: that the righteous and the wise and all their works are in the hand of God" (Ecclesiastes 9:1). Heretofore the Preacher has simply stressed that divine justice will at last be done (Ecclesiastes 3:17; 8:12,13). Now, he stresses that through all the storms and stresses that beset the righteous, they are being carried in the gracious arms of an almighty God. As Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. ably summed it up: "Our quest for identity, meaning, and an explanation of the presence of evil, injustice, and inequities in life must end where Solomon's did -- in the fact that God sits at the helm, ruling and overruling for good" [Ecclesiastes - Total Life, p. 94].
Nevertheless, no matter how true that is, the Preacher reemphasizes that such will not always be evident in what we experience here: "People know neither love nor hatred by anything they see that is before them" (Ecclesiastes 9:1). He illustrates his point by proving that "all things come alike to all." The same thing happens to both the righteous and the wicked, the good and the sinner, the religious and the non-religious, the committed and uncommitted. They all go to the dead (Ecclesiastes 9:2-3). As a result, some heedless men fill themselves up with evil until they are crazy with it (Ecclesiastes 9:3; I Peter 4:3-5). And sin and madness surely do go together. We must be truly out of our minds if we think we can push the God who created us out of our lives and practice all the things that dishonor Him and injure others. So mindless people waste the one life they are given and plunge headlong into the death they know is coming and which will offer them no opportunity to change their destiny. Whatever they were, it is done (Ecclesiastes 9:4-6). Solomon is not speaking here of annihilation (how could there be a judgment?) but of the fact that they will "nevermore have a share in anything done under the sun." The preciousness of life he has earlier stressed with a proverb: "But for him who is joined to the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion" (Ecclesiastes 9:4).
So, if the righteous are not to be distinguished from the wicked in their circumstances and their end, what should the righteous do? Should they allow their griefs and troubles to consume them, to brood and mope in pessimistic gloom? Solomon rejects this reaction as he has many times before (Ecclesiastes 2:24; 3:12-13, 22; 5:18-19; 8:15), and here his exhortation to joy comes to a rather powerful conclusion (Ecclesiastes 9:7-10). Don't just hope to live, he urges, live! Receive God's gifts gratefully, and though you may not always have them, enjoy them when you do. Eat your food and savor it with gladness (Acts 2:46; the wine mentioned here is not a drug as in Proverbs 20:1; 23:29-35, but wholesome food as in Lamentations 2:11-12). Wear with gratitude the clothes you have been given and the soothing oil for your head, remembering that God has accepted your need for such things (Ecclesiastes 9:7-8). And even more importantly, live joyfully with the mate God has blessed you with and give yourself heartily to your work (Ecclesiastes 9:9-10).
And, however can we do that? Because, though the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, and death is certain (Ecclesiastes 9:11-12), we are in the hands of a gracious and all-powerful God who loves us.
He leadeth me! O blessed tho't!
O words with heavenly comfort fraught!
Whate'er I do, where-e'er I be,
Still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me.
[Joseph H. Gilmore, 1862]
