Beasts of Burden

Intro:

Welcome to FA. So glad y’all are here. Let me ask a question, has anyone felt shocked by anything we’ve come across in Ecclesiastes yet? There have been some things in here that have made me uncomfortable. Most of the bible is positive in some way, whether that is shedding light on God’s character or revealing something glorious. But Ecclesiastes is just negative, and it’s intended to be. It forces us to get past the Sunday schools answers and get honest with an “I don’t know”.

Set-up:

Today we are looking at a passage that is bookended by a question that I would guess bothers everyone in this room, or has bothered us at some point. Maybe if we haven’t put it directly in these words before, I mean in the sense of: why do good things happen to bad people?

That’s what this sermon series looking at this book is about. When we look at our life and think it should work a certain way (fair ball/homerun) but it turns out a different (or maybe worse) way than we want it to.

Hook

When I was a growing up, we would watch the movie “The Little Rascals” a lot. One of my favorite parts of the movie is when the kids were trying to get money for supplies to build a go-kart. In one try, they went into a bank, stacked 2-3 kids high with fake beards on. When the loan officer asked them for their account number they replied “7”, and when he didn’t believe them they tried “8”. Having enough tomfoolery, they man snapped their fake beards and said that he had had enough and to get out. When one of the little guys said “you can’t treat people like this” he said “you’re not people you’re kids”. Then he said if “you were my kids I’d punish you” to which the other kid in the beard said “if we were your kids we’d punish ourselves”, which has always been one of the best burns of all time in my opinion.

But it isn’t fair. Why was that man able to say that to those kids? Kids are people. In fact, kids are more human that a lot of us adults are. Those kids just wanted a chance, but because of a power dynamic, they were unable to have that chance (although I know in real life kids can’t take out bank loans).

Power dynamics are interesting things. The most powerful person in our house right now weighs about 12 pounds and is only 8 weeks old. She determines how much we sleep, when we eat, what time we can go out or come home from something. Having a baby makes you realize how truly powerless you really are in many ways. It’s like my buddy says about having babies, “it’s crazy how much concern I have for their well-being while they have so little concern for mine.”

I have learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

Booker T. Washington

Here we have a passage that is bookended with one of the most unfair realities in the human experience: oppression. And in this passage we have a problem, a picture, and a promise.

And each of those things deal with a problem that is summed up in one word: Oppression.

Content

Let’s first look at the problem:

Read 3:16 and 4:1.

The Oxford Dictionary definition of oppression reads like this: “Prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control”. And I want to take a moment and recognize what that word and definition did for some of us in the room. Tightness of shoulders/chest. Shortness of breath. Head/ears got hot. Stomach knotted up. My prayer for you today is to find hope in this if you had that reaction because you have experienced oppression. If you had a reaction like that because you realized in this very moment that you have been the oppressor, “cruelly and unjustly treatment of another human” my prayer for you is that you find freedom in repenting and reconciliation in the name of Jesus.

The problem with oppression is how short sighted it is. Oppression is what happens when you lose an eternal mindset. If what we see is all there is, then it makes sense to do whatever it takes at the expense of others to get what you want. Because if there is no God, no higher power that we have to answer to, then why not make ourselves the highest power?

Now let’s see the picture (read 3:18-22; 4:2-3):

Look at the picture that the preacher gives us: humans are beastly towards one another. A more literal translation of verse 18 would read “I also thought that mankind behaves like this so that God may show them up for what they are, and expose them for the brute beasts they are to each other.”

Here’s the picture that the preacher is giving us:

Oppression dehumanizes. It dehumanizes the oppressed. In her book Redeeming Power, Diane Langburg says that there are three concepts that make a human: a voice, be in relationship, and the ability to shape the world. When we take any of those things from someone by force, it is oppression. It is abuse. Maybe it doesn’t look like physically forcing someone to be quiet or physically hurting them. The preacher tells us to notice that those who sat in seats of justice were doing the oppressing. Those able to write legislature were creating systemic injustice and oppression.

Maybe instead of being an outright angry person, you belittle someone with jokes so much that they stop talking around you. Maybe you’ve criticized someone that is close to you so much they’ve stopped using their imagination. Students, maybe you’ve made fun of someone to the point they don’t want to come to school anymore. Maybe that’s happened to you. The shame, frustration, anger, fear, sadness that you’re feeling is because you aren’t able to be human that way God has made you to be.

But not only does it dehumanize those being oppressed but also those oppressing. When we put ourselves in the place of God, God does what it takes to remind us who we really are. God will not be mocked. Humans were originally made to cultivate and subdue the earth and the critters on it, those are not domination words. When God created man and woman, He created them one flesh, side by side, and they were supposed to rule and subdue together, not each other.

God created us in his own image, his likeness. This means that he gave us power in order to bear his image in the world around us. That means that it is our job to live our lives and take God’s character with us. His wisdom, kindness, love, truth, faithfulness, goodness, and his hatred for injustice. But humans since the beginning have been tricked into thinking that we do this in our own terms. Diane Langberg says it like this, “They who bore the character of God used power in a way that gave them likeness to the enemy of God.”

It reminds my of one of my favorite stories in the Bible. In Daniel 4, we jump into the story of Israel where God, because of their idolatry and sin, has given them into exile to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had just had a dream to remind him that it was God who gave him his authority and power. He receives the message well, but a year later he was walking on top of his palace and claimed the credit for the authority and power that He had. Immediately do you know what happened? He was de-created. Turned into a beast. He used his power to take the place of God and he was given the place of an animal.

That’s the picture of the ones who oppress. Beastly. It’s called “getting too big for your britches”.

If all of this is true. If the best of us end up using the power God has given us to take away other people’s humanity, then verse 21 makes perfect sense. If we don’t treat each other any better than the animals, then who’s to say what happens when we die? Thinking of life this way makes total sense of why our culture has no concern for an after life. We have human history full of war, violence, holocaust, slavery, injustice, and many of it in the name of Jesus, not to mention the viral videos of those who have sworn to protect oppress, to thank for this incredulous view of eternity.

And verse 22 is where the whole thing comes to a head. It’s the crux of the issue. When I first read through this I thought that it was a positive sentiment. But really it’s negative, because here’s what the preacher is saying, “left to our own devices, the best that we have is right in front of us. It’s all we get.” Now there’s something beautiful to this: going out to eat on payday, sitting down with loved ones on a holiday to enjoy a big meal, splurging on something you can enjoy because you’ve worked hard and gotten paid. Nothing wrong with that. The preacher was being honest about the landscape that he saw. It’s the only what you get the 4:2-3.

But the preacher wasn’t able to see as far down the road as we can. Because it’s the promise that we have to look forward to.

The promise (read 3:17)

Here’s the promise that can maybe feel like a threat: God’s judgment. But it’s a promise because whether we like it or not, it happens. Just like there is a season for everything, the reality is that people are going to do bad things to other people. The preacher doesn’t give us a definite time frame of judgment or when the end will come, but God did set a time for people to act the way they will. There is a season for humans to do their thing. But God has set a time when the works of everyone will be exposed.

Here's why this is good news: Paul said in a letter to the Thessalonians that anyone who believes in Jesus will not endure his wrath. He said in Romans 8 that there is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus. In 2 Timothy Paul said that “there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.”

I’ve wonder if Paul had read Ecclesiastes the morning before he wrote Galatians, where he said that “when the time was right, God sent forth his son?”

Psalm 49 has a lot of mirroring ideas and language with this section of Ecclesiastes, and the hope there is that while God will give people what they’ve work toward (judgment), here’s the hope in 49:15: “But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me.”

Conclusion

Can you say that today? Is that you’re hope in the midst of a broken world? The preacher spoke about the landscape he could see. He could only see the trees, but we’ve been given a view of the forest. Oppression happens, wickedness sits in the seat of judgment, but our righteous judge came and paid the penalty for our sin.

He was oppressed and afflicted so that our sins could be forgiven. It was so that the promises of God find their yes in Him. Psalm 9v10 says that “those who know your name (gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness), trust in you, for you, LORD, for you have never forsaken those who seek you.

Communion

And when we take communion today, we get to remember the reality of those things. That Jesus bore our sins so that those of us who have oppressed others by sin (all of us) can be forgiven, and that those of us who have been oppressed by others have an advocate who is there to heal us and hopefully helps us forgive others.