Riddle Me This

The Text

Ecclesiastes 9:5 ESV

For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.

The Problem

On the surface, this can lead us to a couple errors:

Does this push us to the concept of “soul sleep?

Fifty Difficult Passages Explained (Ecclesiastes 9:5)

The doctrine of soul sleep teaches that, upon death, human beings go out of conscious existence and are revived only at the resurrection

Found within Adventism

Not our purpose tonight to study this out

.... Annihilationism?

Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Second Edition) Annihilationism

annihilationism: The teaching that after death unbelievers suffer the penalty of God’s wrath for a time, and then are “annihilated,” or destroyed, so that they no longer exist. Some forms of this teaching hold that annihilation occurs immediately upon death. (41C.2)

A minority, and non-Biblical view of penalty/reward after the final judgment

Also not our purpose tonight

What is the Teacher Discussing Here?

Two important lessons

Though we can find a path from any passage to the Gospel, the Gospel may not be the primary point of every passage

Ecclesiastes does discuss eternity, but it’s not the point of this verse

Read Ecclesiastes 3:9–11

“What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

Yes, we can find a pathway from here to a discussion of the Gospel and eternal matters…and would if we were preaching it…but we’re looking to resolve the question this verse drop on us, “ What does this passage teach?”

It, like most of this troubling book, teaches the futility of this earthy life

When we look at life and times “under the sun” we truly look at a troubling life

For those of us who have an eternal perspective, we have hope

We trust in something—someone who is eternal—God who sent us His Son

Our life is not under the sun, but in the Son

That sets up our eternal hope

1 Corinthians 15:19

“If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”