Be Bold, Yet Wise

Welcome

Good morning again everyone, today we are continuing on in Ecclesiastes, but we are getting very close to being done with it. Today we are going to be reading from Ecclesiastes 11 and next week we will finish our study of the book by looking at chapter 12. Now, we are starting to hit the point of Ecclesiastes where Solomon is ramping up to his main point. Remember, I had shared at the start that chapter 12 contained Solomon’s thesis for the book, but that I wanted us to go through it without jumping ahead to it. So, as Solomon is getting close to that main point, he is going to start ramping up the conversation to lead into that. He’s kind of reaching this point in the book where he has presented his wisdom and information to us and now we have to make a decision. Are our lives going to change as a result of what he has shared in this book? Is your day to day life going to look any different now that you see how short life is? Is it going to be any different because you see all of the good things in life as blessings from God? Solomon is going to give us ways that our lives can begin to look different after reading what he wrote about in the previous chapters.

Ecclesiastes 11:1–6 NIV

1 Ship your grain across the sea; after many days you may receive a return. 2 Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land. 3 If clouds are full of water, they pour rain on the earth. Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there it will lie. 4 Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap. 5 As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. 6 Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.

Prayer

Invest in Many Ventures

Ecclesiastes 11:1–2 NIV

1 Ship your grain across the sea; after many days you may receive a return. 2 Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.

Depending on your translation, verse one might be really confusing. The NIV says to ship your grain across the sea, but some translations say to cast your bread upon the water. What the NIV is trying to do is help us understand what Solomon is talking about. Solomon is most likely talking about international trade with this passage. You would load your ships up with goods, send them out to far away places, and then wait for them to return and hopefully bring back fine goods from foreign places.

Now, you could take this passage as financial advice from Solomon, but I think a better way to look at it is how we handle our spiritual business. What we invest in the Kingdom of God, our time, money, talent, is never wasted. When Solomon would send ships out for these trade routes, they had to be committed. They would only sail once in three years. The ships wouldn’t leave one weekend and be back the next, it was a long process. And in that whole period of time, they had to wonder if their ship was even still afloat or if they were able to make it to the places they were meant to go. So when we invest in God’s kingdom, we also might wonder what it is doing. But even then, we shouldn’t place our work in the Kingdom in one basket. The work of God’s kingdom doesn’t just happen on Sunday mornings. Verse two tells us to invest in 7 or 8 different ventures because you never know what is going to happen. Now, financially this is called diversifying investments. It’s good to not have all your money in just one company’s stock. This also is applied to our spiritual business. We don’t only rely on Sunday church to spread the Gospel and to show God’s love. Why? Because some people simply won’t come to a church service, others might work on Sunday, does that mean we don’t present them with the Gospel or God’s love? No, it means we find different ways to reach them, different ways to love them. So on the spiritual side of Solomon’s advice, we see that we should be investing with the gospel in as many places as we can. We in a sense, send our ships out, and trust that the Holy Spirit is going to be at work in them.

Ecclesiastes 11:3–4 NIV

3 If clouds are full of water, they pour rain on the earth. Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there it will lie. 4 Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.

Verses 3 and 4 describe a little of what farmers are experiencing right now in our area! When clouds form and are full of water we know it is going to rain and it makes harvesting a crop rather difficult, doesn’t it? We can’t control if a storm knocks down a tree, we definitely don’t get to decide which way a tree with fall because of a storm. There are things in life that our outside our control. We don’t decide when it is going to rain or when a storm might cause damage. There are difficulties that happen in life that we cannot do anything to stop. Some difficulties we can anticipate, but others are out of our control. We aren’t able to pencil in disasters on our calendar so we aren’t able to plan for some things, however, we do get to decide what to do with our time when the storm isn’t happening. One thing that can happen is that we fall into this “paralysis of analysis.” We constantly are looking at our surrounding and we always find some reason to procrastinate and not do what should be done. To keep with the farming illustration, there is always a chance the weather won’t work out great. In the spring it might be dry and fit to plant but there’s no guarantee that it will rain when you need it to. So you might wait on planting because you want to make sure rain is in the forecast. So you wait to plant, but the rain shows up sooner than you thought and now you’re rained out and can’t plant at all. We can fall into this way of living where we are always looking at our surrounding and doing so keeps us from doing anything worthwhile.

When it comes to sharing the Gospel or showing love to someone we fall into this same trap. There is always some excuse that we can come up with to not act of what God is telling us to do. That person you were going to take to lunch to get to know them, well you had something come up and you’ll just postpone asking them. We can always come up with some reason as to why we shouldn’t do something. We’re always waiting for the “perfect opportunity” when in reality that perfect moment probably doesn’t even exist. Instead of standing around looking at everything that might go wrong, begin to work for God’s kingdom.

Ecclesiastes 11:5–6 NIV

5 As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. 6 Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.

Verses 5 and 6 really get to the main point of what we need to understand about the work of God. And, quite simply it is that we cannot understand the work of God. Isn’t that a great application point? We want to understand what God is doing in life, we want to understand what he is up to, yet Solomon reminds us that we are not able to understand the work of God. If we could understand all of the ways that God was working, then I don’t think God would be very much of a God. If we understood what he was doing at all times then we would have more knowledge about him that we have even of ourselves probably! I don’t know what I’m doing half the time (Amy can attest) but yet I want to know exactly what God is doing.

The frustration of not understanding what God is going can be seen in a lot of areas of our life. Why did he take away something that was good for me? Why did he give me this trial to go through? Why does it seem like my prayer is unanswered? We can make a whole list this morning of why it can be frustrating to not be able to understand God’s work. However, there is a whole other side to the truth of not understanding the work of God. A side that contains what we can call happy mysteries. What made the Son of God willing to suffer and die for our sins? Why does God love us despite our sin and tendency to drift away from him? How does the Holy Spirit enable us to believe and to hear from God?

We don’t always get a nice and tidy answer, and this passage is a reminder of that. We won’t always understand how God is at work or what he is doing, but yet we are called to persevere in faith. When we do not know what God is doing, we may still trust that God knows what he is doing. While we might not know everything that God is doing, we are still told to sow our seed. We might not know if our act of love to a stranger may have an impact, but do it anyway. We don’t know if people will accept the gospel, but we talk about it anyway.

Ultimately, what this passage is saying to us is to live boldly for the Kingdom of God. In everything we do we should be investing in the kingdom of God in multiple ways. Even though there might be some difficulty in showing God’s love to someone, do it anyway. Even if you don’t understand how God might use a conversation about the gospel, talk about it anyway. We sow the word and trust that God is going to do something with it.

Inspiration

Even as we minister to others, show them God’s love and tell them about Jesus, we can wonder, is this really doing anything? There’s this feeling of uncertainty, of not really understanding what God is doing in those moments. Yet, there are times when we do get to see and understand what God is doing. For instance, there was one pastor who would travel to Ukraine every year and engage in different types of ministry programs there. Some people would respond to the gospel and some didn’t. Some who accepted the gospel would fail to follow through in discipleship as the pastor returned in later years. But, during one visit the pastor was able to see a small glimpse into what God was doing. The pastor went out with some friends and asked a stranger to take a picture of their group. After the picture was taken, the stranger told the pastor....

“You probably don’t remember me, but four years ago you came to my apartment and shared the gospel, how Jesus died for sinners like me. I prayed, but I was just going through the motions to please my mother. I was in a very bad condition for about two years after that. I was caught up in drugs and drinking, but in God’s mercy I remembered what you told me. That Christ died for sinners. In that moment I believed the gospel and felt the Spirit come into my heart. You probably wonder sometimes if what you are doing really does any good. For me, God used it to save my life.”

I think what this story illustrates is that there are times when we don’t understand what God is doing. We don’t see him acting in the way that we like and we can wonder what he is doing. But, even though we may not always understand God, he is always working to advance his kingdom. Instead of living out of caution then, we are able to live boldly because we know that God is always at work. That is the point of view that Solomon takes in our passage this morning.

Action

Live boldly for God and trust that he is at work.

Prayer