Life is Like a Sandwich - Ecclesiastes 9:1-12

©Copyright July 26, 2020 by Rev. Bruce Goettsche

Throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, it appears Solomon has been painting a pretty bleak picture. He told us wisdom, knowledge, pleasure and money does not satisfy. It doesn't matter how much of any of those things you have; you will always be left hungry and thirsty for something more.

He has also talked about the bleak nature of the world in which we live: There is oppression, injustice and inequity. He says people are going to fight over whatever we leave behind. You are never going to feel life is "fair." At times we want to throw the book down and say, "This book is making me depressed!"

But we do not believe this is the intention of Ecclesiastes. We believe Solomon is taking life apart so he can show us what is truly important and of ultimate value. He wants us to see the emptiness of the way of the world so we will be open to something better: the way of God. Like any good teacher he repeats his main points. This is why chapter 9 sounds so much like chapter 8. Solomon is driving home his point and doesn’t want us to miss it.

An image that helps me is that of a sandwich. You have bread on the top and the bottom. These things are somewhat fixed. What makes the sandwich however is what goes between the bread. What you put between the slices of bread will be either delicious or disgusting. The bread in this analogy is in 9:1-3 and in verses 11-12. What makes the sandwich is in verses 4-10. Even if you don’t learn much this morning, you may find yourself craving a nice sandwich for lunch.

Let’s look at the first piece of bread or the fixed realities of life.

This, too, I carefully explored: Even though the actions of godly and wise people are in God’s hands, no one knows whether God will show them favor. 2 The same destiny ultimately awaits everyone, whether righteous or wicked, good or bad, ceremonially clean or unclean, religious or irreligious. Good people receive the same treatment as sinners, and people who make promises to God are treated like people who don’t.

3 It seems so wrong that everyone under the sun suffers the same fate. Already twisted by evil, people choose their own mad course, for they have no hope. There is nothing ahead but death anyway.

A Fixed Reality – the One Thing Certain

Solomon paints a rather grim picture: we are all going to die. It does not matter what you do in life, you will not side-step death. Not one of us knows how long we have to live. The book of James says it this way,

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)

A bumper sticker sums it up well: “Eat well, stay fit, and die anyway.”

Solomon is trying to get us to face the truth. He is not saying it doesn't matter how you live. Of course, it does! However, the wise person lives life knowing the time is short. They make the most of every opportunity because these opportunities are not of limitless supply.

When we were young, we felt invincible. But then a friend dies and we face a harsh reality; we are not invincible. When we are older, we look at the obituary page and see people our age and younger who are dying. We try not think about these things by living fast, hard, and numbing ourselves with drugs, alcohol and packages from Amazon. But it does not change the reality: we will not live forever.

Let's jump down the last part of this section

11 I have observed something else under the sun. The fastest runner doesn’t always win the race, and the strongest warrior doesn’t always win the battle. The wise sometimes go hungry, and the skillful are not necessarily wealthy. And those who are educated don’t always lead successful lives. It is all decided by chance, by being in the right place at the right time.

12 People can never predict when hard times might come. Like fish in a net or birds in a trap, people are caught by sudden tragedy.

Fixed Reality #2 "Life is not Fair"

This is our second piece of bread. Solomon observes that the good guys don't always win. Life does not always go as expected. Much of the time life seems totally arbitrary. Life is not “fair.”

The fact that life seems arbitrary doesn't mean it IS arbitrary. God is leading His creation purposefully and with great wisdom. Things are NEVER out of control. It may FEEL out of control, but it never IS out of control. It may seem like things don’t make sense, but the reality it just doesn’t make sense to US.

Life is unpredictable. One phone can change life from being good to really being terrible. We can go from a cheering crowd to an angry lynch mob in blazing speed. This is the way it is. Our plans can change with one visit to the Doctor's office, one look away from the road.

The thing we need to realize is these things are a result of the reality that we are sinful people living in a sin-filled world. Because of sin, the world is broken. Every moment we have on this earth is a gift. Every time we see a casket or a funeral procession we should realize that it is only because of His mercy that we are still here today.

David Gibson tells a powerful story,

A good friend of mine lost his grown-up daughter to cancer. She was a strong Christian, and so is my friend. On one occasion, when she was dying, he was by her bedside in the hospital when a friend of the family came to visit. This person happened to be a well-connected medical doctor who offered to see if he could arrange specialist help from Harley Street in London. My friend expressed his great gratitude for this offer of help, but then also said to the kind doctor, “Remember, we all come to this.” As a father myself, it was so moving to see his profound grasp of reality in the face of his own daughter’s imminent death. He was not being fatalistic or pessimistic. I know he longed for his daughter to be cured or healed, and he did not refuse the doctor’s help. Yet my friend was living life by being prepared for death. [Living Life Backwards, 1598]

As Solomon has reminded us many times: we are not prepared to fully live until we are prepared to die. Philip Ryken writes,

It [Ecclesiastes] is not the kind of book that we keep reading until we reach the end and get the answer, like a mystery. Instead it is a book in which we keep struggling with the problems of life, and as we struggle, we learn to trust God with the questions even when we do not have all the answers. This is how the Christian life works: it is not just about what we get at the end, but also about what we become along the way. Discipleship is a journey, and not merely a destination.[1]

David had the right spirit in Psalm 39

“O Lord, make me know my end

and what is the measure of my days;

let me know how fleeting I am!

5 Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,

and my lifetime is as nothing before you.

Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah

6 Surely a man goes about as a shadow!

Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;

man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!

So, these are the slices of bread for our sandwich. They are two things that are “fixed”: Death is coming and life is not fair.

Responding to The Realities of Life

Now it is time to ask what is inside the sandwich? What do we do when surrounded by such despair? I think this is what Solomon is telling us in verses 4-10.

4 There is hope only for the living. As they say, “It’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion!”

5 The living at least know they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, nor are they remembered. 6 Whatever they did in their lifetime—loving, hating, envying—is all long gone. They no longer play a part in anything here on earth.

7 So go ahead. Eat your food with joy, and drink your wine with a happy heart, for God approves of this! 8 Wear fine clothes, with a splash of cologne!

9 Live happily with the woman you love through all the meaningless days of life that God has given you under the sun. The wife God gives you is your reward for all your earthly toil. 10 Whatever you do, do well. For when you go to the grave, there will be no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom.

Things may be frustrating and discouraging but, “it is better to be a live dog than a dead lion.” In other words, we can fret about the struggles and inequities of life (which are beyond our understanding at this point) but since we are alive, a better choice is to live. Solomon said, “the living know they are going to die” which can either depress you or motivate you with a sense of urgency for living.

This is actually the fourth time Solomon has told us to “eat, drink, and be merry” (2:24, 5:18, 8:15, 9:7-9 and there is one more in 11:9-10). He is telling us to live life while we have the opportunity. As Rick said last week, we need to leave the hidden things with God and enjoy what we have before us.

Solomon gives us some specific instructions:

· Enjoy your food.

· Have your glass of wine and savor it.

· Dress up! Go out on the town; What are you waiting for?

Solomon is not telling us to be drunkards or to be gluttons. He is telling us to enjoy life. Go out to eat! Take a walk with the family. Take that vacation you have been planning. Go for a drive. Order a pizza. Spend time with your friends. Re-connect with someone who has drifted away. Watch Hamilton on the Disney Channel. Some people will spend their lives afraid and never get around to living. Solomon says, “Live now, fret never.”

Second, he tells us to enjoy our spouses. This means working to keep love vibrant. Again, there are too many people who get married intending to have a great relationship and then they let other things get in their way. Spouses too often are like ships that simply port in the same harbor. They take up nearby space, but their lives otherwise do not intersect except on those times when they are both eating in the same spot. How do people get into this situation? They stop growing together and learning about each other. They allow life to distract them and the result is the most significant relationship in your life dies. Marriages are like flowers, if you do not give them some attention, they will eventually wilt and die.

Francis Chan has written,

Some couples have to wake up to the reality that they’ve been living relationally on shared tasks, not shared intimacy, which is built by praying together, sharing your dreams, carrying each other’s burdens, and building that all-important empathy for each other. Instead, they’re teammates, not spouses, and when you’re merely teammates and the season is over, what do teammates do? They go their own ways.

The challenge from Solomon is to build a good relationship with your spouse. If we cannot have a significant relationship with our "significant other" then we will likely have trouble having a significant relationship with anyone. We should be pursing significant relationships because life is short, and we don't know how much time we have. We should be seeking more than the superficial relationships that so often fill our lives. I think we build a significant relationship by

· doing things together

· praying and worshipping together

· continually learning about each other (being fascinated with each other)

· making time for each other

· working through conflict together

· listening to each other

· looking for ways to serve and encourage each other

The third area to pursue a significant life is in our work. Solomon tells us to work well in whatever our work is. We spend many hours of our lives working. Solomon tells us to make the most of that time. Instead of just "doing a job" we should do the job as an offering to the Lord.

The regard you have for someone will determine how you work. For example, if you were making a presentation to a world leader, you would want it to be your best work. Two things: we should value our employer as just as valuable as that world leader. Second, in whatever you do, you are working for the Lord. We should view everything we do as an offering to the Lord.

Why spend your life enduring a job when you could be spending these years and months giving your best as a way of honoring and serving the Lord? If you approach your work with that attitude it stops being drudgery and will begin to be a delight (that's not the same as saying it will be easy).

It might be helpful to ask yourself some questions. Take some time and think about these scenarios. How would you wish you had done things differently if,

· You spouse died or become incapacitated.

· Your job says you are being let go for downsizing.

· Your children move away.

· You get a call saying your parents have died.

· The Lord comes to take you home.

The question is: in these situations, as you look back on your opportunities and choices how would you wish you had chosen differently? You have a chance to make those different choices right now. What are you waiting for?

Conclusions

Our sandwich class is drawing to an end. We all start with the same bread: death is coming for all of us and we have no idea when it will happen, and we know life is not fair. We can’t assume things are going to go well simply because we are trying to be good and decent people.

So, the issue is: what are you going to put on your sandwich? Will you fill it with fear, apprehension, and timidity? Or, are you going to fill it with life lived to the fullest? Are you going to spend these few years of your life wringing your hands or are you going to spend them singing and dancing? Are you going to hide or are you going to embrace life? Are you going to get to the end of your life wishing you had lived, or will you get to the end of your life grateful for the life you have had living for the Lord? Living well starts with Jesus. He is the One who brings flavor and meaning to life. He is the One that makes it possible to live well even in tough times.

These are the choices that surround us. Right now, we are surrounded by those who wring their hands. There is the virus, an upcoming election with a country divided, there are the uncertainties of what life is going to be like in the future, there are economic stressors, there have been sudden and tragic deaths. Again, the question is: will we fixate on these things or will we be motivated by them to squeeze every ounce of life out of the days that we have? Will we bemoan what isn't, or will we embrace what IS?

Jesus said, "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly." Later He said, "In the world you WILL HAVE tribulation, but take courage, for I have overcome the world." That's the truth He wants us to embrace. We do not know what the future holds, but we do know who holds the future. As believers we know we all come to death . . . but that is only to set us free for the life that is to come. And that is worth a celebration! Why not start now? And if you are going to have a party, I suggest you serve sandwiches.

[1] Philip Graham Ryken, Ecclesiastes: Why Everything Matters, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2010), 202.