The Question of Life

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We're in the midst of a series in which we are studying the famous words of the professor of Ecclesiastes, and we have seen that this is a difficult and confusing book, because the author seems to assume a rather bleak view of human existence. The professor refuses to ignore the harsh reality of suffering and the inevitability of death. And at first glance, it might seem as if he's suggesting that life really is completely meaningless and pointless. But that would be a mistake. Because his goal is not to drive you to despair, but rather to lead you to the only source of hope. He's purposely polarizing us. He's trying to eliminate all the alternative options and explanations in order to lead us to that only source of hope.

Now, what makes the professor of Ecclesiastes so unique is that he dares to ask the hard questions. I've observed that increasingly, there's more and more people, especially in New York City, who are spiritually curious. And you may be among them. You may be a person who is asking the big questions, and you're honestly searching for answers. You're trying to figure out how to live a meaningful life, even in the midst of so many things that just don't make sense. And if that's you, well then Ecclesiastes is the book for you. It is hard to over explain or over emphasize the contemporary relevance of this book. It hits all the themes that matter most to us.

So today we come to a rather fascinating section. On the one hand, this chapter is perhaps the most negative of everything we've seen so far in the book, and yet at the same time, it includes some of the professor's most positive life affirmations. And this is the kind of writing that leads us to ask, what kind of a book is this anyway, and what is it doing in the Bible? This book is filled with deep, striking contrast. And yet, at the same time, this section also provides us with this beautiful, little glimpse of the gospel, and may provide us with a little bit of a hint in terms of how to resolve all the tensions that we experience in life. So as we turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 9, today, I'd like us to consider: 1) the inescapable problem, 2) the interim solution, and 3) the inexplicable explanation.

¹But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. ²It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. ³This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. ⁴But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. ⁵For 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. ⁶Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.

⁷Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.

⁸Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.

⁹Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. ¹⁰Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

¹¹Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. ¹²For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.

¹³I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. ¹⁴There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. ¹⁵But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. ¹⁶But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard.

Ecclesiastes 9:1-16

The Inescapable Problem

Well, first I'd like us to consider the inescapable problem which the professor lays out for us in the first six verses. At the end of verse 6, he uses this phrase (which is now familiar to us) “under the sun.” And when he talks about life under the sun, he's describing universal human experience. He's saying that no matter where you look, no matter where the sunlight hits, this is what you're going to find. And even when you bring God into the picture — the One who is above and beyond the sun — there's still an awful lot about life that just doesn't make any sense.

And so here he's being brutally honest. He says, even if you're a Christian, even if you're a believer, you have to deal with this inescapable problem. In verse 1, the professor challenges what you might call the religious view. And here's what I mean by that. Religion basically says, well look, if you believe in God, if you follow his teaching, if you receive his wisdom, if you try to live a life of righteousness, well then God will bless you and make your life go well. We assume that it's a quid pro quo kind of relationship. You'll be safe in God's hands. If you do your part, then he'll do his. If you receive his wisdom and follow his ways, then he will bless you and make your life go well.

But the professor blasts this whole way of thinking as it relates to both life as well as death. See first, he blasts it when it comes to life. So religion says if you believe in God, if you obey him, then God will bless you and make your life go well. But earlier in chapter 8, verse 14, the professor says, sorry, it doesn't work that way. Because the good guy doesn't always win. And again, he says that here in chapter 9, beginning at verse 11 He says, “Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.” Life is a crap shoot, he's saying. It doesn't matter if you're faster or stronger or smarter; time and chance happen to everyone. So what he's telling us here is that the good guy doesn't always win.

I remember years ago when the Cormac McCarthy novel “No Country for Old Men” was turned into a film. I called my dad to ask him what he thought about it. My dad is a little bit of a film buff. He loves going to the movies. So I said, “Dad, what do you think about ‘No Country for Old Men’?” He said, “I hated it.” And I said, “Why? Why did you hate it?” And he said, “I hated it because the good guy dies and the bad guy gets away with it.” And that's true, that is the film — and that's often life. Sometimes the good guy dies and the bad guy gets away with it.

But the professor goes further. He doesn't just blast this sort of religious view that the good guy should always end up on top, but he also blasts it when it comes to death as well as life. Because again, religion says, look, if you obey God, if you follow the way of the righteous, then you'll be in the hands of God. You'll be safe. You'll be secure. God will take you to heaven when you die. But the professor asks, how do you know? In verse 1 he uses the words of love and hate to represent God's acceptance or judgment. And he says, how do you know whether you will receive love or hate in the end? Who knows? Nobody has come back from death to tell us what ultimately happens. And therefore, what good will all of your wisdom and righteousness do in your life then? How will you even know?

Now this is obviously a very irreligious thing to write, and you might wonder, is that what the professor is really saying? Is he really saying that our ultimate security in God's hands is in doubt because we don't know what happens after death? And that is what he's saying. Because look at verse 2. The professor draws a series of contrasts that zero in on the things that were most important in the Old Testament. The biblical faith of ancient Israel was focused on being a person who was committed to being righteous rather than wicked, good rather than evil. But notice what he says here in verse 2. “It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath.”

Now I admit that this is pretty bleak. Because what the professor is asking us is, what good will all of our religious practice and commitment do when we’re dead? We're all headed to the same place. Verse 3, the same event happens to all. And when you're dead, you're dead. And who really knows what your fate will be? So he's just being honest. But there is one little glimmer of hope here in these first six verses, and it comes in verse 3. Though the professor says that we're all headed to the same place regardless of how we live, he says in verse 3 this is an evil in all that is done under the sun. He calls this evil. He says, this is wrong. It doesn't fit. This isn't the way that it's supposed to be. And so the commentator Christopher Wright says this about this passage:

If everything is ultimately meaningless and indistinguishable—then how can he say that one thing is evil rather than another? The very idea of something being evil and another thing being good comes from some objectively real standard that must transcend our own limited lives and experience. Otherwise, how would we know?...Even our sense of outrage at the evilness of evil…is a sign of hope. Protest only makes sense when it emerges from a longing for a reality that one knows to be good…

We only know what is evil because we know what is good. And because we know the difference, we long for there to be something better than what we see around us.

So in the eyes of the professor and throughout the entirety of the Bible, death is treated as an evil. This is not what God intends. This is not what God wants. In fact, this is what God hates. And we have to bear that in mind, because there's a lot of secular people today who would say, well, we shouldn't resist death. We should just accept it. We should just embrace it. Death is not an end; it's just a new beginning. Or in the immortal words of Yoda from Star Wars, people would say that death is just a natural part of life. Or they might say that death is simply a transition, and therefore there's nothing to be afraid of. When you die, you simply transition to another state of being, and there'll be no you left to worry about it. So forget about it, forget about death. But we want to turn and say to the secular person, how do you know? How do you know that after you die there's no you left to worry about it?

The Bible offers an emphatic no to death. Death may be inescapable. It may affect us all, no matter who we are, no matter how we live our lives. But death is wrong. It doesn't belong. It's an enemy intruder in God's good world, and therefore we're not supposed to embrace it, we're not supposed to accept it. We're supposed to resist it. We're supposed to rage against it. It's evil. It's evil in the eyes of God.

The Interim Solution

But then that brings us to my second point, which is that, if death is evil, and if it is ultimately inescapable for all of us, the question is, what are we supposed to do about it? And beginning in verse 7, the professor offers us at least an interim solution — but it's only an interim solution. So on the one hand, he's extremely negative in the first six verses, and he tells us that death does seem to render life completely meaningless and pointless. And yet, on the other hand, beginning in verse 7, he becomes extremely positive by telling us that life is to be enjoyed as a good gift from God in the meantime, in the time that we have. So in verse 7 he says, eat your bread with joy, drink wine (but not too much of it) with a merry heart. Verse 9, enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun. And verse 10, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Why? Because you won't be able to do it when you're dead. And therefore it's the reality of death, the inescapability of death, that fills this life with meaning. Which makes the way in which we live our life all that much more urgent and imperative. We have to enjoy life before it's too late.

Now sometimes people might ask the question, what would you do if you knew that you only had one year to live? But I actually think that that's too pressured of a question. Because if you only had one year to live your life, you'd probably stop doing a lot of things. You'd probably stop working. You'd stop doing normal life, and you’d just focus on your bucket list. So I think a better question would be, how would you prioritize your time if you knew that you only had five years to live? Now, five years is a little bit of a longer period of time, which means that you have to keep working. You have to keep doing normal life, but you might do normal life differently.

You can see the tension here. We're living in a time where we know that death is inescapable. Whether you're a religious person or not, not one of us can escape this problem. And yet, in light of that, how do we try to find meaning and purpose in our lives now? We often pursue a variety of different paths, many of which the professor in Ecclesiastes has laid out for us. We might pursue the path of pleasure, where we try to find meaning through love relationships or through just having a lot of fun. Or we might commit ourselves to a particular cause. We might commit ourselves to the pursuit of justice or wisdom. Or we might try to achieve some kind of great success in life, and that's how we'll leave our mark on the world. Or perhaps we'll decide that we're just going to try to be a good, moral, upright believer in God who keeps the faith, and that's what's going to give our life meaning. But what the professor relentlessly asks us to consider is, what good is any of that when you know that in the final analysis, everything you are, everything you've ever loved, everything you've ever accomplished, will be swallowed up by death? What difference will any of it ever make?

Now this is a heavy sermon, so let me introduce a little humor to lighten things up a bit. Let me make a confession. Let's call it a pop music confession. And no, it's not that I've been to a Taylor Swift concert. But I am a fan of listening to the English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, and my kids love making fun of me about this. So if you catch me walking down Lexington Avenue with headphones in my ears, no, I'm not listening to worship music; I'm probably listening to Ed Sheeran. Now, what I appreciate about his songs is that they are deeply personal as well as emotionally expressive. He taps into a number of universal themes like love and loss, life and death, and a longing for some kind of deeper meaning — a longing for more.

Now usually in preparation for a Sunday sermon, I spend a lot of time in thick commentaries on the Scriptures, but this week I had to spend a little time in People Magazine. And what I started to realize is that many of his songs easily could have come right out of the book of Ecclesiastes. See in 2017, for example, he wrote a song called “Supermarket Flowers,” which he wrote after his maternal grandmother died. And in this song, he assumes the voice of his mother. (He even sang this song at his grandmother's funeral.) So he describes a scene in which his mom begins to clean up after his grandmother has died. And so the song begins:

I took the supermarket flowers from the windowsill
I threw the day-old tea from the cup
Packed up the photo album Matthew had made
Memories of a life that's been loved

Took the "Get Well Soon" cards and stuffed animals
Poured the old ginger beer down the sink
Dad always told me, "Don't you cry when you're down."
But, mom, there's a tear every time that I blink.
Oh, I'm in pieces. It's tearing me up but I know
A heart that's broke is a heart that's been loved.

In 2021 he wrote another song called “Visiting Hours,” which was a tribute to a friend from Australia who was also an older mentor in his life. And in this song, he expresses this desire, this wish that he could introduce this friend who's now dead to his daughter who has just been born, but they never had the chance to meet. So in “Visiting Hours,” he sings,

I wish that Heaven had visiting hours,
So I could just show up and bring the news,
That she's getting older and I wish that you'd met her,
The things that she'll learn from me, I got them all from you.

I wish that Heaven had visiting hours
So I could just swing by and ask your advice
What would you do in my situation?
I haven't a clue how I'd even raise them
What would you do? 'Cause you always do what's right.

And then in 2023, he wrote a song called “Toughest,” which describes the moment when Ed Sheeran and his wife, Cherry, discover that she is pregnant with her second child, but the doctors have now found a cancerous tumor in her body. And the doctors informed the couple that they will not be able to perform surgery — they will not be able to remove the tumor — until after the baby is born. So he sings,

I don't know what to think; The word cut through the day
The doctor said "It's cancer"; And a baby's on the way
Life changes in a blink; Decisions to be made
They say "Radio's the answer"; And that both lives can be saved.

So in all these songs, you can hear Ed Sheeran grappling with the existential weight of sickness, sorrow, and death. And what do we typically do when we're confronted with our mortality? Well, we try to find some kind of meaning to our lives that will outstrip death. And one way we try to do that is through achievement, through success, perhaps even through fame. When Ed Sheeran was a little kid, his school classmates voted him as the person who was most likely to become famous. And as a kid, he said that he dreamed of performing one day in Wembley Stadium. It'd be like performing at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands. You know, a packed out football stadium that can hold 80-90,000 people. And one day he did. His dream came true. He played before a packed out crowd in Wembley Stadium, but it didn't satisfy. Because it didn't feel the way he thought it would feel. And so in his song “First Times,” he sings,

I thought it'd feel different playing Wembley
80,000 singing with me
It's what I've been chasing 'cause this is the dream.

So he's achieved his dream, but it felt different from what he had expected. He wrote later, “I was on the stage, and I thought to myself, it's just a concert. It was a good concert, but it was just another concert.” And so after all the excitement and the hype, he says he had a simple moment with his wife afterward, and this led him to a deeper realization that actually is fully in line with these words of Ecclesiastes. So he goes on to sing,

When it was all over, I cleared out the room
Grabbed a couple beers, just me and you
Then we start talking the way that we do

Ain't it funny how the simplest things in life can make a man
Little moments that pass us by
Oh, but I remember

The first kiss, the first night, the first song that made you cry
The first drink, red wine, on a step in Brooklyn
I still feel the first fight, but we both made it out alive
And I can't wait to make a million more first times.

Now, when we read words like this, they're well said, and they carry the ring of truth. We might say, yes, that's right. That's how we should approach our mortality. And those words are very much consistent with what the professor is saying in verses 7-10. Enjoy your life. Savor all those tiny, little, beautiful moments, because that's what matters most. And this is what Sheeran later explained:

I wrote this song thinking about all the simplest things that seemed so insignificant at the time, like our first glass of wine sitting on a step in Brooklyn opposite a pizza bar, and at the time was just “whatever”… Now, it's become tradition. We go back to New York and that's what we do every single time.

Life is full of small things that seem so insignificant at the time, but they are massive in the grand scheme of things. We chase after these things in life that we think will fill the void, whereas the void is actually being filled by all these tiny, beautiful things… You go “I need to do this thing because this is what I think will be the making of me and this is going to be it” when actually it's all around you and you just have to take it in sometimes.

Now I would say, yes, he's on to something. But you know what? There's still a problem here. And do you know what the problem is? Did you catch what Sheeran said? He said we try to chase after the things that we think will fill the void. That's right out of Ecclesiastes. That's what the professor tells us. We're trying to find meaning, but it ends up being like chasing the wind. And so he says, we spend all of our time chasing after these things in life that we think will fill the void, whereas the void is actually being filled by all these tiny, beautiful, little things. And yet, there's still a void. Because even if we do savor the moment, even if we do cherish all these tiny, little, beautiful moments in time, in the end, in the final analysis, they will all be lost. They'll all be swallowed up by death if death gets the last word, if death is the final answer.

And so at best, the encouragement to enjoy life as a gift is only a temporary solution. It can only be a temporary solution. Enjoying life now is as good as far as it goes, but it only goes so far. In order for life now to mean anything at all, we need to know that these moments will last. That we can savor all these tiny, beautiful, little moments, and they will not be lost in some kind of cosmic abyss, but rather they will last into eternity. And so that brings me to my third and my final point, which is the inexplicable explanation.

The Inexplicable Explanation

See, the professor believes that despite what it may seem, life is not meaningless. But he doesn't exactly know how or why. He knows that there's an answer. He knows that there's an explanation, but he can't quite articulate it. It's an inexplicable explanation. But he provides us with a little clue based on the story that he tells at the end of the passage, beginning in verse 13. He says,

I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard.

Years ago, Sinclair Ferguson wrote a little commentary on the book of Ecclesiastes, and he noticed that as negative as the professor is, he observed something in life that impressed him. It seemed great to him, and it caused him to question his doubts about the meaning of life and what happens to us after the grave, and whether it really matters whether or not we commit ourselves to God. He observes that there's this small city with only a few people in it and a powerful king who comes against it, lays siege to it. But in that city, there lived a man who was poor but wise, and he saved the city through his wisdom.

Now there are three things that are rather curious about this. One is that this wise man was poor. Now you would think that if you were wise you'd be wealthy, you'd be powerful. The professor of Ecclesiastes, for example, has great wisdom, and he becomes as wealthy as a king. And that's usually how it works. If you're smart, if you're wise, if you know the way the world works, you use it to your advantage to acquire wealth. But not this man, he was wise, and yet he was poor. He didn't use his wisdom to benefit himself. He's humble.

But then secondly, we're told that somehow he uses his wisdom to save the city against all odds, even though it was a small, little city being attacked by a great king. And so he uses his wisdom not to serve himself but to save the city, to deliver the city. He's sacrificial. And yet the most stunning thing is that no one remembered this man. They turned on him. They despised him. They rejected him. They forgot his words, despite who he was and despite all that he had accomplished for them.

See, even though he can't quite put his finger on it, the professor recognizes there's something here. There's something here that's important, that's great, that's pointing beyond itself. And he can only see in shadow; we can see reality. He can only provide us with a clue; we can see where the clue leads. Because he's pointing us to the only source of hope. Sinclair Ferguson put it like this:

The words read almost like a prophecy. Whose name most naturally comes to mind when we hear of a poor man, full of wisdom, who became a saviour but whose life and teaching have been neglected and rejected?

Instinctively we think of Jesus. The man the “Professor” saw had the attributes of true spirituality and wisdom; but he was just a reflection, a kind of preview of the spirituality and wisdom of the true Poor and Wise Man who would later become a Saviour.

The New Testament actually talks about Jesus in precisely these terms. Paul describes him as “Christ the…Wisdom of God.” He summarizes the meaning of his life and death: “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.”

Do you hear that? Jesus, though he was rich, became poor, so that through his poverty, you might become rich. Elsewhere Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1 that some people seek dramatic signs of power, and some look for wisdom. That's where they think greatness is to be found. But we preach Christ crucified, which is a stumbling block to some, and it is sheer madness to others. But to those who are being called, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Do you hear what he's saying? What could be more foolish? What could be more stupid? What could be more idiotic than the God of the universe becoming a human being in the person of Jesus. And what could be more weak? What could be more degrading? What could be more obscene than God dying on a Roman cross among the lowest of the low, a form of death reserved for terrorists and for traitors? And yet the wonder of the gospel is that by becoming a human being, Jesus so identifies with us in the midst of our broken, fallen world, that he can bear our sin, our guilt and our shame and take it away. He can blot it out. And Jesus, by being the perfect, holy Son of God, is someone whom not even death can hold down. No, he breaks through the bonds of death. And therefore, what at first seems to be a human tragedy turns out to be the key to the divine strategy.

See, looking at the cross, we would say, what a human tragedy! What a waste of a young life! What a senseless death! But this human tragedy is actually the key to the divine strategy to set us free from all that holds us down. Because by going to the cross, Jesus opens up a way through death to new life. His death is just a prelude to his resurrection. See, the professor asks, well, how can anybody really know? How can anybody really know what happens on the other side of death because no one has come back from death to tell us? But there was one. There was one who broke through the walls of death through his resurrection and who comes back and who now tells us that if we put our simple trust in him, we will be safe in the hands of God. We will be absolutely secure, and we will know that the way of wisdom, the way of righteousness will lead to life with him. And that is why we can enjoy life now, because we know that when we savor every little, tiny, beautiful thing now, it won't be lost. We won't lose it in some kind of cosmic abyss when we die, but rather every single little, beautiful thing that we cherish and love now will last into eternity because of Jesus. And that's what we celebrate at this table.

Let me pray for us.

Father, we pray that you would help us to come to grips with the inescapable problem that not one of us can avoid death, regardless of who we are or how we live. No matter how righteous, no matter how devout, no matter how much we obey you, we all experience the same event. We all experience death. But help us to lay hold of this little hint that the professor provides us of where we can find the true, poor, and wise man who became a savior. Help us to put our trust in Jesus, the one who opens up a way where there was no way so that we can truly enjoy life now and all its little moments, knowing that none of them will be lost, but they will all last into eternity. And it's in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen.

Sermons

Ecclesiastes: The Enigma of Life Under the Sun: The Question of Life

The Inescapable Problem

The Interim Solution

The Inexplicable Explanation