Taking the Roof Off (Ecclesiastes 3:16-4:3)

There are so many stories in the gospels that I love involving Jesus. Let me tell you one that I just absolutely love.

You ever been crazy busy like really focused on a task, needing to get from point A to point B doing something big and important, but you’ve got to stop by the store and get something…and the cashier decides this would be a great time to tell you their life story?

Well in the story I’m telling you about that’s happening here…and the important thing that the disciples are doing is moving Jesus from one places to another—get him over there to this big crowd of people to do the stuff he came to do like preach and heal people and stuff.

And now you’ve got this guy…Bartimaeus is his name…and he’s beside the road…and he cries out for Jesus. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Now I know that we’re good Christian people and so we would never do what they did…they basically told ol’ Bart to can it. Hush! Be quiet…and it says “they warned him”. Warned him.

He’s blind so they can’t give him one of those looks. They can’t say “shhh”…no sign language here…they have to verbally threaten him…if you don’t be quiet....

But he just keeps on crying...

Now again…we’d never do this…would we? But if you would…let me tell you why. Because we don’t do so good in the face of suffering. We have a really hard time sitting with it.

And let me add a little more to this. If you’re the disciples there is a view of the world that has been imparted to you from an early age…it’s that people like Bartimaeus—yeah you should be kind—but his condition is really his fault, maybe his parents fault, but he wouldn’t be like this if he was one of the righteous ones. He has a curse on him.

So when he says, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me”…you roll your eyes a little. Ahhh…homeless guy has it figured out…mention Jesus, make a little profession of faith and that’ll draw them in…I’m not falling for it…we’re busy. Hush, Bartimaeus…not today devil....

We have a hard time sitting with suffering and we have an especially difficult time sitting with suffering when it creates dissonance in us…when it doesn’t fit into our neat little boxes…when it invades our world. That’s why we might throw some change but we aren’t going to stop…we aren’t going to sit with Bartimaeus...

But this story is about Jesus. Verse 49 is astonishing. “Jesus stopped...” In the context of what is going on in Mark that’s just attention grabbing. Jesus hasn’t stopped for anything for a bit…he’s face like flint to Jerusalem…big jet airliner on the runway…isn’t going to stop because somebody says they left a package of peanuts in the terminal. Bartimaeus is that pack of peanuts…but not to Jesus.

And I love that. Jesus stops. And I think that’s so refreshing for people because man, we stink at stopping…even still. Church people can hurt others like this. Pastors can hurt people in this way. And pastors can be hurt in this way. We’re just not that good at entering into the world of another person and especially not if its going to create some dissonance in our life.

And so we end up keeping our questions and our doubts and our hurts and shame and so many things to ourselves and just assume that we’re the only ones thinking this, or doing that, or wrestling with this thing…and nobody will stop…nobody will really enter in and hear you out…like they won’t go to that next level…they’ll see the blind man asking for coins, give some coins and never really see the man…or if he’s really inconvenient that day just say, “hush”. And that really hurts.

But you need to know that Jesus doesn’t do that.

Now why am I telling you all of that to introduce Ecclesiastes? Because I think we’ve got a blind Bartimaeus here in our text. And I think God’s Word here is pleading with us to stop…listen…hear his story…don’t just dismiss it…let him keep on talking…try to really get into his shoes here…because the Quester is doing something.

Okay…let’s get uncomfortable. Feel the dissonance here…maybe even a little feeling of hopelessness wash over you.

Ecclesiastes 3:16–4:3 ESV

Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him? Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

Is he saying what I think he’s saying? Is this a biblical author saying to us...

People aren’t really much different than animals…we all die…and nobody really knows what happens afterwards. Maybe their soul goes on…but where to? Do you know? Have any clue? Nah. You don’t know. Might as well just enjoy your life right in front of you because that’s all you have.

And then…again…biblical author here…There is no comfort from oppression. If you’re on the short end of the stick…I don’t know what to tell you. I mean it’d be better off dead…but what might be even better is that you’d never been born. Can I get an “Amen”?

What is the Quester doing here? Is he just having a bad day? Is this some depression talking? What do we do with this?

Let me start with a story.

“God is sovereign. God does everything for His glory. God will use any situation for His glory!”

Those are amazing and awesome and wonderful truths. They really sustained me for so many years…still do…but there was one time when they scared me to death.

I was playing church league softball. And one of my former youth group kids was on the other team playing third base. I smoked one down the line. It took a bad hop and came up and smacked him right in the nose. Broke his glasses in half, broke his nose, bloody mess.

But he seemed alright. I felt awful but we kind of joked about it a little…ha ha…this is what happens when you become an adult and leave youth group.

I was at church camp that week and so right after my game I rushed back to the cabin for night time devotionals. And that’s when I got the call. That student had been life-flighted to Columbia MO (remember I’m in NEMO at the time). He had a significant brain bleed and they weren’t sure what was going to happen.

“God is sovereign. God does everything for His glory. God will use any situation for His glory!”

That wasn’t comforting at all in that moment. Someone recited these things to me and it was just trite phrases. I know that God will use any situation for His glory and that’s the problem…I could totally envision a world in which I was the cause of this young man’s death and somehow God used it for His glory and this kids testimony was amazing and it’d be used for God’s glory....but if I’m being honest that wasn’t all that helpful…I didn’t want one of my former students to die. And I certainly didn’t want to be the cause of it.

I had to sit with THAT before those theological truths became more than just trite phrases. I’m not sure if I’m doing a good job of connecting the dots here....

Here is what I’m trying to say…when we’re not comfortable with something…like say this message in Ecclesiastes…a preacher saying, “It’d be better if you weren’t even born”....we don’t have a place to put that. Most of us don’t have a category for that. Bible verses are supposed to give hope....

And so what we do is we try to doctor it up with trite phrases....we try to calm that dissonance. We try to put it somewhere…it has to go someplace…what do I do with this...

Maybe I’ll just throw it over there…not really deal with it.

Maybe I’ll just put it in this category of “uhmmm God’s good…let’s not bother ourselves with these questions…hey squirrel”

Or maybe I put in the category of stuff that makes me really mad about and I’m kind of cheesed at God, but I really don’t want to admit it and so I’m just going to ignore it for a bit and hope it goes away.

We’re just trying to find some place we can put it so that it will make us feel a little better.

And side note…this is what we do also to things that happen to us that we don’t know what to do with…this is what we do with trauma…it’s looking for somewhere to land and we often misplace it and then it just messes everything up…and before we know it we end up losing it on some stranger on the internet, or some kid, or we ignore Bartimaeus and tell him to hush…because unbeknownst to us it hit that trauma spot. We put it in a place that made us feel better in the moment but it wasn’t actually dealt with.

What I’m trying to say is that you might very well be able to throw a nice little answer over this passage, it’ll make you feel better, you won’t have the dissonance and you’ll go on your merry way. And it might never even disturb you again. Bartimaeus might just hush up…or maybe you’ll get far enough away you can’t hear the plight of the blind guy anymore. And I think some of what the Quester is saying here is this…if you can get away with that…well, maybe go for it. I suppose that’s one way to live.

But the gospel of Jesus is calling us to something deeper. If you don’t sit with Bartimaeus you aren’t going to see a blind guy healed. You’re going to miss out.

Here is my question for us…if I’m not able to gloss over his words with some make me feel better religious words…what am I left with?

I want to show you something here. Now this isn’t a strategy you always use…but I think it is, at least in part, what the Quester is doing. I’m going to tip his hand a little early…but that’s okay.

Let’s say you’ve got someone talking like the Quester. I look for righteousness and justice and there isn’t any of that but just wickedness! I look at oppression and power and the weak don’t stand a chance. And you’ve got a sovereign God? You’ve got an all-powerful and all-loving God in a world like this? We have no certainty of any after-life. There isn’t ultimate justice.

Now here is one thing you can do. Throw a trite phrase at it. Something to just get that dissonance to quiet down…make you feel better…man, it might work for you…might work for a season…but it’s not working for them.

And you can try this with your own doubts too. And it might work for a bit. But what happens when it doesn’t anymore?

Here is another possibility and I think it’s what the Quester is doing. It’s something Francis Schaeffer called “Tearing the Roof Off”. What you do is you just follow the thought all the way out…just keep it going…you stop. And you engage Bartimaeus.

“What do you want me to do for you...”

That’s what Jesus says…He doesn’t assume…because he wants Bartimaeus to speak…he’s drawing him out.

Let’s do that with the Quester here.

v16…I was looking for justice and righteousness but I found wickedness. He’s not happy with how God’s world is ordered…if God is really a righteous Judge shouldn’t there be justice and righteousness reflected in humanity? I mean if we’re really made in his image...

Do you feel yourself pulling for that theological answer…feel yourself reaching for that balm? Well…it’s that way because....

Don’t do it…let him talk...

v17…God will judge the righteous and the wicked…there is a time for everything under the sun...

Whew. See we didn’t have to pull out that comfort…he did it for us. Good job Quester…you’ve got it figured out.....

v18…God is testing us so that we know that we aren’t much different than beasts…ah, yes, he’s making a fine theological point here isn’t he…we’ve sacrificed our high position as image bearers and have made ourselves like the beasts…good job. I can take this one home.

v19-20…For…okay, he’s telling me why he just said that…wait…beasts and humans are the same? Too far, bro.

Both die. as it says in verse 20 all go to dust and to dust all return. Go to where a graveyard used to be a couple thousand years ago and grab a pile of dirt…you don’t know if that has Fido in it or your Aunt Bessie. Harsh…but okay...

You aren’t any different than your dog. There isn’t anything of much different value. (Guys, we have people making these arguments today…the Quester is making a basic argument of Darwinian Naturalism years before it was ever made…but he’s doing it from the point of death and not from “existence”. It’s all vanity. It has no substance to it. No gain. You’re both worm food.

The best conclusion he can come up with now…this is his new balm…might as well enjoy the world that we have now…this is all there is. You have no way of knowing the future..okay, I’ll be an agnostic…I’ll admit that I just don’t know....but what I do know is that which is before me.

4:1---And then he takes this for a spin and sees oppression and those in power being wicked. And the tears of the oppressed and nobody to comfort them. By implication a good creator ought to comfort them. This isn’t how it should be!

The oppressors have power and it doesn’t look like anyone is stepping in to stop them. And you don’t have any justice or righteousness under the sun.

Alright Quester…let’s take it to its conclusion. If you’re right…we aren’t any different than beasts…then what grounds do you have to say that it’s wrong for powerful to oppress the weak?

If this is how the world is set up…the strong rule the weak…and this is what you are seeing…and there is something in you saying, “nobody is comforting them!” And that’s bothering you....why? What grounds do you have for that to bother you?

What’s your objection to genocide? How can you even have a standard of righteousness or justice? Where did that come from? Are you the standard?

This, I believe, is what the Quester is doing…he’s taking everything to its end…he’s taking it to the bottom to see what is found there…and this is what he does here...

He takes the roof off and says, “well, it’s better to be dead than living. and it’s even better to have never been born.”

You good with that as your worldview? You know what comes from that?

We’re swimming in this as our worldview in our nation....it’s part of why we have school shootings, it’s behind racism, it’s behind win at all cost politics on both sides of the aisle, it’s why we think we get away with dehumanizing people, and why we are even debating something like abortion.

You can keep arguing about the “thing” itself but we really need to get underneath all that and realize that loads of people have embraced as their worldview what the Quester is saying here.

Now I think the Quester is doing this intentionally…but even if he’s not…I would say that God is using His words intentionally to help us see that an only “under the sun” philosophy (that this world is all their is) collapses on itself. You want justice? You want righteousness? You want to see people not oppressed?

As you strip off that worldview you don’t leave people in despair. You proclaim the gospel.

You are different than beasts. God created you in His image. Which means you have great value. It also means you have great responsibility. God created us for rest, rule, and relationship as we reflect Him in the world. You have a purpose and it’s a big one.

But the Scripture also tells us that humanity made shipwreck of this high calling. All of us do. All of us have. And that’s why you get things like you do in Ecclesiastes. It’s part of living “under the sun”. It’s why you have futility, meaninglessness, emptiness, etc.

Because you can’t find it here anymore…we’re outside the Garden. We see in Revelation 21, where God is taking us. And Revelation 21:23 says:

"The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God illuminates it, and its lamp is the Lamb."

But that implies we aren’t there. The glory of God doesn’t shine or illuminate like it ought to. His presence has to be mediated. Someone has to stand between us and the Father. No more walks in the morning in the Garden.

And all of this brokenness is why you have wickedness in the place of justice and righteousness. It’s why the powerful people oppress instead of create flourishing for others. It’s why the weak are in a spot where it seems nobody is there to comfort them.

But that isn’t the whole story. There is a reason for this futility. ‌The absurdity and monotony of life under the sun is meant to drive us somewhere. We’re supposed to take the roof off and say with the Quester, this just doesn’t work. Paul says this much in Romans 8 when he says that “creation was subjected to futility”. He did this “in hope that the creation itself would be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children”.

There is a better story. Jesus came. And where justice and righteousness meet you see a beaten and tattered body bleeding upon a twisted cross. Where the Son of God takes upon Himself all of our futility and all of our rebellion which leads to this whole mess.

You see the most powerful one in the universe…the one with power even over the powerful…and rather than oppress—He lays down His life. He provides comfort to the poor and powerless. So that we can say…all of this injustice does have an answer. It does have an explanation.

There is hope for a better day.

Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth…? Well, I’ll tell you Quester. The Son of God died and was buried and went to the grave and in three days He rose. He ascended. And He promises that all those who are united to Him will rise too.

And we’ll enjoy the new heavens and the new earth. When all is made right.

You’ve got two ways to live— the Quester tells us one possible Creation, Fall, Redemption, Glory story. You got here somehow just like the animals you aren’t much better…and we’ve put wickedness in the place of justice and righteousness…and there isn’t redemption, there is no one to comfort. Your glory…well if you’re alive, it’s better to be dead…that’s the best you can hope for. But it’d have been better for you not to be here.

Or you have that you were created with a purpose, for a place, and a people. Created to have relationship with God. We wrecked that. And that’s why we have all the pain and sorrow and everything we have now. But God is fixing it. He’s fixing it through His Son. And someday he promises:

Revelation 21:1–7 ESV

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.

God says that second story is true. And look at the fruits of it. Love, joy, peace, hope…all those things. Which story do you want to live?