The Unknown Hour

Welcome

Good morning everyone! This morning we are going to jump ahead in Ecclesiastes. Last week we finished chapter 5 but today we are going to skip some chapters and begin to look at chapter 9. This doesn’t mean that 6,7, and 8 are bad chapters, but purely for our times sake, (and so we aren’t going through Ecclesiastes during Advent) we are going to jump ahead a bit. Chapter 6 continues on with the themes that we have talked about the last two weeks, about how you can have wealth and possessions, but if you aren’t able to enjoy them, then what is the point. Chapter 7 has this heading that just says “wisdom” and is full of wisdom sayings from Solomon. It has some hard sayings and I would encourage everyone to look at it this week. And Chapter 8 gives wisdom when it comes to authority figures as well as once again addressing the issue of bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people. But today, we are going to talk about one of the biggest reasons why I feel like the book of Ecclesiastes is helpful for us to go through. I mentioned when we started this series that out of all people in the world, Christians should be the most aware of death and the most equipped to talk about it. Christians have Christ as their hope when in comes to the topic of death, but yet even with that hope I feel like we still have this hesitancy to talk about death. So this morning, while we won’t solve every issue we have around death or the pain that death causes, I do hope it opens up our conversations about it and that we talk more about what death means for us as Christians with our family and friends. (Who’s excited?!) Let’s take a moment together then and ask for God to be our teacher.

Prayer

Engage

One thing about death that we spend a lot of time and money on, is how do we avoid it? There are hundreds of different products, lifestyle tips, groups, surgeries, that are all directed to us as ways to avoid death for as long as possible. Some of this stuff is good and is helpful for us to remember. We do want to take care of our body because God has given it to us, but some of the things out there are just absurd. There are people who claim if you follow their program for living that you will live to 100, other products that help you look and feel younger. But probably the craziest thing that people do to try to outrun death is to freeze themselves. Now this might sound crazy, but there are companies that specialize in freezing the bodies of dead people. They offer their customers the chance to preserve their loved ones bodies indefinitely, in the hopes that future medical discoveries will allow the person to be brought back to life. For the low low price of $220,000, this company is offering people the chance “to live a second life.”

Tension

The reason behind this company, ultimately, is because people are afraid of death. It is that one thing in life that you can’t experience multiple times and once it happens, it happens. There isn’t a whole lot you can do to reverse it. In 2017 there was a survey done called “Survey of American Fears” conducted by Chapman University, and in this survey over 20% of people claimed that they were very afraid of dying. This fear of death can become so consuming that it develops into a phobia and will prevent people from even going outside of their home because of their fear of death. Now, my goal this morning is not to make us afraid of death, but to come to better terms with it. So, let’s see what Solomon has to say on the topic of death and what wisdom we can gain from Ecclesiastes 9.

Death Can Make Life Meaningless

Ecclesiastes 9:1–6 NIV

1 So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them. 2 All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them. 3 This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. 4 Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! 5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten. 6 Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.

Solomon’s point about life being meaningless is really the main point here. If this world is all there is, if there is no God, if there is no life beyond death, then everything is meaningless. It doesn’t matter what you accomplish in life if this is the mindset that you have. You can be the most righteous, good person, or the worst person, without God then death cancels everything out. One of the reasons Solomon is so blunt about death in this chapter is so that we would be driven to learn how to deal with death. One thing that Solomon points out in verse one is that you can be righteous and wise, but that does not guarantee a long, healthy, prosperous life. And I know we’ve mentioned this before, but yet that is the mindset that many Christians have. If we are faithful, then God will allow us to prosper. Pastors will tell their congregations that if you really love God, you are going to be happy, healthy, and wealthy. But that isn’t what happens and Solomon is pointing that out here. You can be a faithful follower of Christ yet still suffer and have hardship in life. Matt Chandler, a pastor, points out that John the Baptist was an extremely Godly man, yet he got his head cut off. God’s people do suffer, but for the Christian, we trust that Jesus is enough for us. So if godliness is not a promise of a good life, then we can’t look at our circumstances to see if God loves us. If we were to look at our circumstances to determine God’s love, what would that have looked like for so much of the early church? What would that have looked like for almost every single disciple of Jesus? They would have looked at their situation when they were killed for their faith and determined that God must not love them, but we know that isn’t true. So it’s important for us that we don’t look at our circumstances and think that God loves us less because we are going through some kind of trial.

Solomon moves to the point that we all know to be true then. No matter who you are, we all share the same destiny. If you are good or bad, clean or unclean, all of us share the same fate of death. And verse three points out that we need to remember that death is evil. Death was not meant to be a part of the perfect world that we started out with. When God placed Adam and Eve in the garden before the Fall, they didn’t have to worry about death. They didn’t participate in a survey that revealed their fear of death. Why? Because death wasn’t a part of the perfect creation that God had made. Death entered into the world because of sin. Death is a harsh reality for all of us because of our sin. Romans 5:12 reminds us that the wages of sin is death. Because I sin, because you sin, because we all sin, death will be a reality for all of us.

Verse 6 points us back to looking at life under the sun, apart from God. Because of death, if there is just life under the sun, then everything will be wiped clean, everything will be forgotten. It’s like a whiteboard. You can spend your whole life working to add interesting points to your whiteboard, but if there is no God, once you die the whiteboard gets erased and nobody even remembers it. So if life is just under the sun, death ultimately makes life meaningless. If at the end of your life everything about you just vanishes, then life is pretty meaningless.

But, death doesn’t have to make life meaningless. Death can actually make life meaningful if looked at in the proper way.

Death Can Make Life Meaningful

Ecclesiastes 9:7–12 NIV

7 Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. 8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. 9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. 11 I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. 12 Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.

Death has a way of making you enjoy and find joy in life in a way that nothing else can. I know I have experienced this and I am sure that you all have as well. When you hear about the death of someone close to you, someone you used to know, and it hits you hard, for a brief moment you look at life completely different. When you hear of death it causes you to examine what you have in life. Chances are after the visitation or funeral you go home and hug your spouse a bit closer. You tells your kids you love them a couple more times than usual, you call that friend you haven’t talked to in months. Death can cause us to look at our life and see all of the good things that we have. And that is what Solomon is saying here in the second part of chapter 9. Death doesn’t have to make life meaningless, it can make it meaningful. Knowing that death is something we all have to deal with should cause us to enjoy our lives. Enjoy the food that you eat! Enjoy a glass of wine! Dress nice, smell nice, enjoy life with your wife, with your spouse. Think about your work differently because of death. Even though there are days where you want to just stay home, you don’t want to go into work, realize that there will be a time when you won’t be able to work. Enjoy it! The reality of death should not make us afraid of life, but rather it should make us enjoy life all the more. Walk out of this church this morning and feel the sun (or rain, whatever the weather is) and cherish it. Catch up with one another here at church, with your family, friends, and enjoy it!

Along with being a huge Star Wars fan, I’m also a huge fan of a TV show called The Office. During one of the last episodes one of the characters in it says, “I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them.” If you are here this morning, with breath in your lungs, you are in the good days. Solomon wants us to see that, to experience it, to enjoy the life that God has given to us.

While the wisdom that Solomon gives us is good here, we even have insight into something that he hadn’t seen yet. On this side of the cross, we look at death in a totally different way.

The Answer to Solomon’s Dilemma

Romans 5:12–21 NIV

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned— 13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. 15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! 18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. 20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Death is a result of sin, yet death does not get the final say. Death no longer reigns because of our sin, instead through Jesus we have grace and life eternal. What Solomon was seeking throughout his experiments, we are presented with through the gospel of Jesus. Yes, we sin and we die as a result of that sin, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus. Jesus himself takes away the curse of sin and death because of what he does on the cross. As verse 18 of Romans 5 tells us, one righteous act resulted in our justification before God. Jesus is the ultimate answer to death. I think we all might have some uneasiness around death simply because it is unknown. We don’t know how it feels or what we will really be thinking, but because of Jesus we don’t have to be afraid of death. We don’t have to fear death like a large percentage of our world does. We know that there is more to life than things under the sun. And because of that, we can talk about death in a way that isn’t fearful or apprehensive. Instead we can look at death and recognize that through Jesus we are already victorious over it.

Prayer