Apathy Undone | Ecclesiastes 11:1-6

Apathy Undone 5.0 | Ecclesiastes 11:1-6

Introduction

We think knowledge is power. We all have those words with the flying star underneath burned into our head: “the more you know”.

We often think that if we know ahead of time it gives us some sort of power to change outcome. Now don’t get me wrong, there is incredible mental benefit to having clear expectations. I know lifting weights is painful. I have a clear expectation so I am not taken by surprise when I wake up the day after a workout and can’t move. But did the knowledge actually change anything? Did it give me power like we think knowledge does?

Recently my wife and I went on a trip to Conway New Hampshire so I could take her on a scenic train ride but the day before the train ride I wanted to explore national parks and see some sights. In my research I came across a video on YouTube describing an overlook called “Artist Bluff”. In the video the man talking said “this hike has the difficulty level of a walk in the woods”. That man is a liar. To be fair, maybe not a liar, but at the very least was not considering body types that are not athlete.

First of all — talk through slides

So we get past the difficult part, and we see the little trail we could have taken. We go down a slight grade and then look up to the vertical climb we would now take.

Several heavy breaths later we ask a gentlemen on his way down how close we are and he says we are about halfway. Note: the way he said it

He followed up with “It is worth it”. Now a couple things: first, his assessment of how far we were was fairly accurate, so again, nice to know what to expect. However, two things did not change. We still had no idea if it was worth it for one, and secondly, knowing how much further we had did not lessen the amount of pain we went through both during and after, days after, that hike.

There are all sorts of things I think about when it comes to that experience. Would we have gone, had we known? Once we did know the difficulty, what if we had turned back.

Sometimes the only way forward is by faith.

As we unpack Ecclesiastes today we see the beginning of the end. The preacher is going to wrap up his observations and more and more we see a shift towards finding meaning in God more than any other pursuit. The main thing he tries to get across to his readers is that

You can’t know everything and won’t live life until you embrace that.

In other words, you won’t begin to take risks, you won’t begin to offer yourself to others, you won’t begin to really live until you are ok with the fact that there are somethings you will just never know.

Our big idea this morning is quite simple, yet many of us need the reminder more often than we allow ourselves to believe. Here it is.

MPS: You are not God.

As we get into the passage this morning the preacher is writing about how life is full of risks, how there are something’s we will never know, yet there is one who knows everything. So that is our roadmap. Let’s begin with our first point -

Point 1 | The Risk of Living

[1] Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. [2] Give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.

There is much debate over these verses. Most commentaries tend to agree that given the context, it is most likely referring to wise ways of investing. There are direct cultural references to maritime law of the time as well as folklore and tradition.

However there are a large number who don’t take these verses that way. The other line of thought interprets verses one and two to be referring to generosity.

Both of these make sense in many regards. If it is advice on how to invest, this would fall in line with a lot of wisdom literature we see in scripture and given the experiences the preacher has laid out, it would seem he knows a thing or two about how to build wealth.

Yet if we take the generosity approach it also makes a lot of sense. As if he is saying, you have no idea what tomorrow holds so why not give money away? Be generous, give to seven or even eight. And as it says in verse 1 you will find it, whether in friendships, blessings or even just better mental health there is a return on even your giving that you might not expect.

Wait a minute though. Wasn’t the big idea of last week’s sermon “Life is gift not gain”? Why would there be this shift to speaking about building wealth? Well the preacher is not primarily talking about investing. He is not even necessarily talking exclusively about being generous either.

If life is gift not gain, the preacher is going to get very practical and show us how to be fully present in the life we have been given. See, it is very tempting to read a book like Ecclesiastes ignorantly and walk away with an apathetic mentality. If nothing really matters then why do anything? Why save money? Why plant roots and join a church? Why work hard and progress my career?

Friend if that is your line of thinking I would lovingly plead with you along side the author of Ecclesiastes — wake up and pay attention. The things the preacher pursued in this book, he says they are meaningless in and of themselves as a means giving life. But if we pursue God — if all else is ancillary; if all pursuits hold their rightful place as types and shadows, as mere gifts — when we know that the gifts are never better than The Giver then the meaninglessness of life is vaporized by a life more meaningful than we could dare dream!

See our passage is all about perspective.

There is a place in town on Kirksey Drive where as you turn the corner you see Table Rock and Hawksbill and they both look massive. Yet as you continue to drive toward 64 and turn on to it you look to your left and now both peaks look very small and very far away. I spoke with my science expert and the consensus is that your brain compensates for all sorts of variables. In other words, we can’t always trust our perspective.

See, the preacher is holding up your worldview under a microscope. He is asking the question we all must necessarily answer. What shapes my worldview? Perhaps a more pointed way to ask is, do I have a biblical worldview or not?

Gibson puts it like this:

Ecclesiastes urges us to think about life under the sun from the perspective of life above the sun. There is a God in heaven, a wise and loving Father, who holds the righteous and the wise in his hands. Think about time from the standpoint of eternity. What you do, and how you do it, matters because God will bring everything and everyone to the day of judgment. _David Gibson

So what are we really talking about? Investment strategies or generosity? Neither. We are talking about the risk of living an abundant life.

The preacher is saying, take the risk! Give your wealth way! Venture into the business! Pursue the dream — in light of the fact that you are not the one in control. See, it is only this understanding that allows you to have any semblance of peace while taking a risk. What do I mean by this? Well without getting to far ahead of myself I mean this.

If my hope is not hinged upon this or that pursuit working out, but hinges upon the creator of the universe and what he has for me, then I am free to pursue them. This doesn’t mean we don’t experience sadness when things don’t work out but more and more as we grow in trusting God we are able to grieve with our chin up. We can process the disappointment of things not working out while knowing that God is for us, He loves His children, and He gives good gifts.

So what would this look like for us today? What does it mean to risk living an abundant life? What if we went all in on the life God has given us instead of pining for something different? What if our church was made up of whole families who started to believe this?

Some of you have been sitting idly on the sidelines for too long. God has brought you to this place and time and perhaps this is your flag in the ground Sunday where you say yes to God and yes to this church family. What if you took the risk of being known? What if you committed to a C group? What if you went all in with Coram Deo/Mission Church?

Well that is a risk. You may get hurt. You may have to work through conflict. You may bless someone beyond what you could imagine. You may be blessed beyond what you could imagine.

God could very well use us to change Burke County. Could you imagine?! If we consider all we have learned from Ecclesiastes and hold our passage up to that context I think we will see the same sentiment in Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 29:5–7 [5] Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. [6] Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. [7] But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (ESV)

So take the risk of living an abundant life. Risk being fully known by this Gospel family with the understanding that in Christ you are fully known and fully loved already. Risk being uncomfortably generous with your time, talent, and treasure. Risk walking by faith more than calculation. Trust that God in his infinite faithfulness will take care of you.

See God knows and sees.

You are not God.

He is.

He is in control.

This is good news.

It leads to our second point today.

Point 2 | Know What You Don’t Know

[3] If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. [4] He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.

Essentially the preacher observes here that there are somethings that are relatively predictable but there are plenty of things that aren’t. Even the rain clouds are deceitful at times. It looks like a monsoon is incoming at times and there won’t be a drop, yet the next day will be sunny and clear skies when suddenly the rain shows up.

Who knows which way a tree will fall? I don’t. Certainly the men who our neighbors hired to remove their tree didn’t. This was evident when our mailbox was destroyed, then puzzled back together crudely and shimmed into the ground at quite a shorter height. Our mailbox was destroyed again by the power company and even a couple weeks ago another neighbor had a man in his tree with a chainsaw and the branches came down inches away from what is now our third edition mailbox.

We have all heard the adage, “the more I know, the more I realize I don’t know”. It’s so true though. See this is a truth that we know at the core of our being but most of us don’t live like this day today.

We live as if we know best. We live as if we know ourselves better than anyone possibly could. Don’t think it’s you? Ask someone to make a decision on your behalf and you have to follow it. All of us feel the hairs on the back of our necks rising right now. What an uncomfortable thought.

More difficult than even that — ask someone who loves you to challenge, correct, or rebuke you. When is the last time someone did and you weren’t defensive? We are incredibly arrogant creatures. We more often than not inform those around us rather than inviting people to speak into our lives and shape us. We think we know everything. And when we realize we don’t it causes us to spiral or perhaps worse, we are driven to stagnation stuck in place because of fear of the unknown. Look at verse 4.

[4] He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.

We have to wrestle with the cousin of apathy, fear driven paralysis. The preacher is now speaking of the person who sees the potential danger and in response does nothing at all.

Because you just cannot know what the future holds. You have no idea what will happen. And we have unpacked many positive outcomes of risk but you maybe wondering, what about the negative sides of risk? What about the negative side to not knowing.

You may have some short term predictions but no one sees the disaster. No one sees those tragedies. So often we live in the world of what if’s and think if we had only known what was going to happen we could have some how stopped it. But what about the cancer diagnosis? What about chronic suffering; the unknown things that come about and stick around?

The preacher is posturing us into a difficult theological question: If God knows everything, why doesn’t he stop the bad things? I have heard a lot of really bad answers to this question in my life. I am sure you have too. However there have been a few voices that have given me great comfort in difficult times. While we don’t have time to fully dive into this I do want to carefully offer some thoughts.

Firstly I would reiterate our big idea yet again. You are not God. If you are like me there are plenty of times that fact infuriates you. How often I have found myself thinking I could do it better. Parents, I am sure you experience this all the time with your young children, especially when they are at the beginning of autonomy and they insist on doing something themselves. In your at least 20 year advantage of life experience you can see there plan is silly and won’t work. Every now and then your kid will feel that humility and say I need help.

The sober minded moments speak louder though; we can be thankful we are not God.

We don’t always get an answer to the suffering we experience but I think what the preacher has been urging us to do all throughout Ecclesiastes is to embrace the mystery; or rather embrace the fact that you don’t know everything.

“The temptation for those who suffer is to assume that because we can’t think of any good purposes God may have for our suffering, there can’t be any.”_Tim Keller

If you don’t know, Tim Keller is a pastor who passed away from pancreatic cancer this year. Some of his last words were “There is no downside for me leaving, not in the slightest”. Tim was faithful in ministry and a great example of someone who understood that knowing everything about how God was working, is actually a great comfort. Look with me at Isaiah 55

Isaiah 55:8–9 [8] For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. [9] For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (ESV)

The preacher’s counter intuitive wisdom is that once you have embraced the fact that you don’t and can’t know everything, you see more clearly the things in life you do know. Or another way to say it is. I don’t know everything because if I did that would make me God. You are not God.

See in Proverbs 1:7 we read

Proverbs 1:7 [7] The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. (ESV)

Understanding you have limits, understanding your knowledge is encapsulated by a capacity, that you have only so much creativity in you, only so many “original” ideas; who set the limit? God did, for your good and for His glory. Solomon in Proverbs drives this home. He says knowing there is a God and He is to be feared is where all knowledge begins.

Here is where beauty really starts to manifest. Because God knows everything. He knows everything!

He spoke into the cosmos and life burst forth! He knows every centimeter of the bottom of the ocean. He knows of creatures still undiscovered in it’s depths.

He is divinely aware of the magnetic and gravitational fields required to keep the earth on it’s exact axis. He has unending knowledge on all time, all space.

There is nothing outside of His knowledge and there is nothing that He has lost control of. As it’s been said, there is no rebel molecule!

He knows all because He made all! He is limitless! He, the giver of limited capacities, has no capacity. This God. This God who knows everything also knows you.

And not as some arbitrary fact. He decisively and actively pursues knowing you. He who is mighty and great has entered in to know you.

You are not God. God is God and He is good.

1 John 3:20 [20] for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. (ESV)

This leads us to our final point this morning.

Point 3 | Known By The One Who Knows Everything

[5] As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. [6] In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.

We know but we don’t right? We know a lot about how babies grow in a womb, and the technology is incredible now days. But when does that soul enter? When does that DNA start to do it’s dance. There is so much, even though we might know some of it, we don’t fully know. We definitely don’t understand it.

The preacher wraps up this section by once more driving home this point — you don’t know what is to come, but this lack of knowledge should not hinder you from moving forward. And here we see that shift toward God. He further emphasizes here, You don’t know how God is working. Isn’t it magnificent that we get to see the works of God at all! Oh what a grace it is that we can see evidence of His hand all around. But we do not know all of his ways. We do not know all of His thoughts.

So the preacher says, in verse 6: work hard in light of not knowing the future. Submit yourself to a life where only one God reigns. Don’t hold back, he says. Don’t let fear overcome. Don’t let despair paralyze you.

“Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” _ JRR Tolkien

The preacher concludes verse 6 with the same sentiment we see all throughout scripture. This voice is echoed in the Psalmist’s words

Psalm 90:12 [12] So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (ESV)

&

Psalm 31:15 [15] My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors! (ESV)

And Paul’s words in Ephesians

Ephesians 5:15–17 [15] Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, [16] making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. [17] Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. (ESV)

See the gift of life we have been given. See that you, I, we are not God. God is God. He is good. He does not sleep. He is working all the time for your good. We know this because unlike the preacher we are on the other side of Calvary. We know the goodness, the love, the favor of the God who knows all, because of Jesus.

John 12:24–25

[24] Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. [25] Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (ESV)

Jesus is the bread of life cast down from heaven. Jesus served and served some more. Jesus is the better portion and he gave himself to us. Jesus hung on a tree in the midst of that greatest disaster to touch earth, the murder of the Son of God. Jesus is the better seed, sown into the ground in death, and the greatest harvest reaped on the third day as he sprung to life overcoming Satan, Sin, and death!

You are known by the One who knows everything. He loves you immeasurably. Give yourself to Him.

Application Questions

1. What are specific ways my community can challenge me to walk by faith and not by calculation?

2. How might I step out and risk being known? What is it going to take for me to be all in here?

3. What are areas in my life where fear of the what if or unknown is king? What am I holding back from — what am I unwilling to risk?

4. What if failure is not the worst thing in the world? What would I set out to do if I believed that I am already successful in the most important way because my “success” has been given to me?