Ecclesiastes 3: Being joyful and doing good

Sam Williams
23rd July 2017

Introduction

I have given this sermon the title “being joyful and doing good” which comes from the practical instruction to us from v12
“I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live”

Now joyfulness may well not be the mood that springs to mind when thinking about the book of Ecclesiastes. I enjoy reading novels to my wife, at the moment I’m reading “Far from the Madding crowd”. Near the start of the book a farmer asks a girl to marry him and she turns him down, Thomas Hardy describes the farmer accepting the refusal with:

“the bearing of one who was going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever.”

That description really paints a vivid picture in my mind. I think any guy who’s been turned down by the girl of his dreams may well have thought in his heart “vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” in the aftermath.

But in several places in Ecclesiastes, Solomon talks about joy and I do not think for one moment that Solomon is mocking his readers, I think the encouragement to live joyfully is entirely ernest. So we will look at how this passage encourages us to be joyful and why it exhorts us to be good.

The Swiss theologian Karl Barth gave the following advice to fellow theologians on how to avoid being too morbid by making sure you keep God in mind as you develop your view of the world. He said:

“… [you should] always first proceed from God’s relationship to man and only then continue with man’s relationship to God…lacking the sky-light and hence serenity, the theologian remains a gloomy visitor upon this earth of darkness… The thoughtful theologian who refuses to begin with God is bound to begin with misery, individual and corporate, with the chaos which threatens him and the world around him, with anxieties and problems. He will turn around in circles and end up precisely where he started. Cut off from the fresh air, he considers it to be his bounden duty not to let others breathe fresh air either”
Karl Barth - The Humanity of God - The gift of freedom

It is commonly said that the method of Solomon in writing Ecclesiastes is to show our need for God by doing precisely what Karl Barth recommends against; namely, trying to find meaning to our existence by using only his own reason and not looking to God. Whilst there is some truth in that assessment the fact is that there is hopefulness, we do see through the skylight and breathe the fresh air when Solomon talks about God.

The mood of the book is gloomy, introspective, you might even say hopeless but Solomon’s purpose in painting the picture he does is to show us our need for God, to direct us back to him and to deepen our gratitude and our reverence towards Him.

A time for everything

The chapter begins with a poem.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

Poems are a funny way of communicating. Less precise than prose but able to speak to our spirits in a way that plain speaking can’t. The earlier poems in the book have a weary and desperate tone to them. This one is more detached and contemplative. The most repeated word in this poem is “time”. This may be a poetical way of reinforcing what Solomon said in previous chapters that there is nothing new, each generation faces the same problems, joys, seasons, choices, gains and losses as the one before.

Time is sometimes spoken of as a dimension is the way that forwards, backwards, up, down, left and right are but it is unlike the others in that I can walk to the far end of the hall and then come back, but I can’t go to 07:30 pm 23/07/2017 and then go back to 07:00 pm 23/07/2017, I can’t even get to 07:30 pm and stay there. Each moment that passes is gone forever. This makes me think of how there are things - even commonplace everyday things - over which I’m not and cannot be in control of and the passing of time is one of those things. Also how once we’ve done something we can’t change what we did. History is history.

The poem makes me reflect in other things that are out of my control. “A time to be born, and a time to die”. Who here chose to be born? That is an event that we have no power over whatsoever. Sadly it’s the case that some people choose to take their own lives early, but no-one can choose not to die at all. We are all going to die some day.

The Bible speaks of our frailty in Psalm 103:15-18 where it says:

As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, And its place acknowledges it no longer.

So the poem begins by making me think about my weakness. But the poem then moves into things over which we do have more control. “A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted” this is something very much under our control yet anyone who grows plants will know there is a good and a bad time to choose for the planting and harvesting if you want to get the most from it.

The line “a time to kill, and a time to heal” makes me think of the power we have been given, and the heavy responsibilities that come with it. This line as well as “a time to break down, and a time to build up” makes me think of how it is often easier for us to destroy things than to make them.

Some things are easy to choose and inconsequential, others are hard and important and it may be impossible for us to know the outcome. Sometimes things we think are inconsequential may not be. “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak”. You could imagine situations where this choice would make little difference, or where it could be the difference between life and death.

Towards the end the poem makes me think how different the choices presented to each person are. Solomon was a king. When he finishes his poem with the line “a time for war, and a time for peace” he is speaking as one who has the power and awesome responsibility to decide whether or not to go to war. Whereas for all of us when we read it we think of our powerlessness over whether we end up in a war or not. The choices and situations we have are unique to each of us. We all have power in greater or lesser measure over one another, our decisions have consequences on other people and their decisions have consequences on us.

Sometimes in life the right way is easy to decide, at others it can be difficult to see. The Bible does not say that any of the things in the poem are always wrong or always right. Whether these things are right or wrong depends on the circumstances. This makes me think about how difficult deciding what the right thing to do can be.

As well as limitations to our reason making it hard to choose the good from the bad there may be times our feelings make it hard. Sometimes you may feel like doing the right thing so it is easy, other times you may feel like doing the wrong thing. The poem makes me reflect on how we need wisdom and ability as well as willingness to stand a chance of doing the right thing.

Beauty in the world - God’s goodness

I think it is quite a deliberate decision Solomon made to describe the seasons of life, the choices we make and the changes we go through in the form of a poem. Poetry is a form of art, a thing we enjoy for it’s form, for the pleasing rhythms, emotions, and it’s creativity. Using a poem makes me think of the richness of our experiences in life and it really helps emphasises the point Solomon makes in v11 that God “has made everything beautiful in its time”.

This comes a little out of nowhere in the book because up until now the book has been predominantly gloomy. Here we get one of the reasons that we can be joyful. Life is amazing isn’t it? Solomon says that the world around us is full of beautiful things made deliberately beautiful by God. What does this say to us about God? Why should it be that we should find things beautiful at all? Isn’t it a wonderful thing that there is so much enjoyment to be had from admiring the beauty of what is around us and by marvelling at the richness of how we experience our life? Just think about our ability to think and reason, our capacity to feel emotions.

I think these things point to God being good. But is it enough to see beauty in the world and therefore be joyful? What about the evil things in the world? What about the seeming futility of life? What about the way that bad things happen to people who haven’t done anything to deserve it? And where does it all end?

V11 has always stuck out to me. In the first sentence it says God has made everything beautiful in its time. Then it says “Also he has put eternity into the man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end”. I think this verse is talking about how we are aware of the concept of eternity without needing to be told it. Perhaps also that we have an inbuilt sense that death is not the end of us. Despite the fact that it is hard to think of anything that will last forever, or to contemplate the vastness of eternity we still have the words “forever, never, always” in our language, why would we have these words if we did not have eternity in our heart?

One of the reasons Ecclesiastes is such a hard book is that it seems contradictory in places. And contradictory to the teaching of other parts of the Scriptures. One particular aspect is the way it talks of death. In places in the book there are strong suggestions that there is nothing after death. The chapter we are looking at ends with:

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?
Ecclesiastes 3:19-22

Even stronger than this later on Solomon says

Whatever you find to do, do it with you might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom Sheol, to which you are going. Ecclesiastes 9:10

God’s justice

If there were only these passages and others like them in this book and in Proverbs we would have to conclude that Solomon did not believe in life after death. Yet there are ways in which the book points strongly towards life after death being a reality.

In Ecclesiastes we are told that “there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness and wicked people who prolong their life in evildoing” 7:15. We are also told that “God will judge the righteous and the wicked” 3:17 Again at the very end of Ecclesiastes it says “Fear God and keep his commands, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgement, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

If justice and judgement are not carried out during our life (and Solomon points out all kinds of evil which is not judged and where amends are not made) it must happen when our life is over. God being just is a sombre kind of reassurance to the persecuted and downtrodden. There is a horribleness to thinking that people get away with the evil they do. Yet it is an inescapable conclusion - if you believe in no God, no life after death and no judgement - that the “wicked who prolongs his life in his evildoing” has got away with it. But also the murderous, terrorist bomber who kills himself at the same instant as his victims has got away with it too. Many, many wicked people get away with it. But - Solomon says that there is a God, there is life after death and God will bring every deed into judgement. Wicked people may have got away with things for now, but they will have to answer to God.

Pervasiveness of sin

But how do you think it will be to stand personally before God? As well as there being things pointing towards God’s goodness there are passages that encourage us to have a respectful fear of God. The things we considered earlier that are beyond our control are not beyond his, the things we can’t know are known to him, and the wisest of men is foolish in comparison to God.

In this chapter Solomon says “in the place of justice there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness”. This passage tells us that even those people who we esteem as good, even in them there is wickedness. This is reinforced later in Ecclesiastes 7:20 “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins”. And also in

Psalm 14:1-3
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.

If we look at the standards of conduct the Bible teaches then we can see that none of us match up to it. If we search our own conscience we can all remember things we’ve done we wish we hadn’t. So what hope do we have when we come face to face with God? We deserve punishment for the things we’ve done wrong.

Our need for faith

I think the answer is found in a verse I struggled with very profoundly. It’s Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

This verse bothered me because I wanted to be able to argue the reason for having faith in a reasonable, logical way and this verse just pulled the rug from underneath me. I thought it was saying that faith is unreasonable. Then over time I came to realise that faith is almost synonymous with trust. If the bank trusts you to repay the mortgage because they’ll repossess your house if you don’t, can you really say they trust you? But when my wife trusted me to be faithful to her when I married her that is trust. I don’t think trust is required when we have all the knowledge, all the power we need to carry out a back up plan. Trust and faith are needed when we don’t have the knowledge, and the control.

Solomon didn’t know about how Jesus was going to come into the world and take the punishment for those who believe in him. But he knew God and had faith in him enough to say “I know it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear him” 8:12

We do know that God so loved us that he sent his son to die to take the punishment in our place for our sins if we believe in him. In his life Jesus repeatedly asked that his followers have faith, believe in him and follow him.

With faith we know that God exists, we trust the truthfulness of Scriptures, believe in life after death, know that God is good and that he is gracious to not merely overlook our sins but to pay the penalty for them and to offer us more than we can comprehend, eternal life with him.

With faith we know there is an ultimate standard of right and wrong, and that even if God forgives us that there are consequences that matter for the things we do wrong. Therefore in faith we should do what we know to be right even if it costs us, knowing that we have an eternal security that cannot be taken away.

With faith we know that we are not subjected to futility, and that helps us to enjoy the good things in life. Though the world is fallen there are signs of God’s goodness all around and God enjoins us to take pleasure in the good things in life.

I’m going to finish with a quotation from Deitrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a pastor, theologian and a conspirator against the Nazi regime. This is a portion of a letter he wrote from a Nazi prison having been arrested. He knows he will probably never get out alive and sometimes he is sad in his letters, but there is also an irrepressible joy that comes from his writings, he wrote this on Ecclesiastes chapter 3

We ought to love God in our lives in all the blessings he sends us. We should trust him in our lives, so that when the time comes, but not before, we may go to him in love and trust and joy. But, speaking frankly, to long for the transcendent when you are in your wife’s arms is, to put it mildly, a lack of taste, and certainly not what God expects of us. We ought to find God and love him in the blessings he sends us. If he pleases to grant us some overwhelming earthly bliss, we ought not to try and be more religious than God himself. For then we should spoil that bliss by our presumption and arrogance; we should be letting our religious fantasies run riot and refusing to be satisfied with what he gives. Once a man has found God in his earthly bliss and thanked him for it, there will be plenty of opportunities to remind himself that these earthly pleasures are only transitory, and that it is good for him to accustom himself to the idea of eternity, and there will be many hours in which he can say with all sincerity, “I would that I were home.” But everything in its season, and the important thing is to keep step with God, and not get a step or two in front of him (nor for that matter a step or two behind him either). It is arrogant to want to have everything at once - matrimonial bliss, and the cross, and the heavenly Jerusalem, where there is no longer marriage, nor giving in marriage. “To everything there is a season”. Everything has its time… a time to weep and a time to laugh…a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing…a time to rend, and a time to sew…and God seeketh again that which is passed away” Deitrich Bonhoeffer - Letters from prison - December 18th 1943 to Eberhard Bethge

Bible references

Man’s weakness

Psalm 103:15-18
As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, And its place acknowledges it no longer.

God’s greatness

Isaiah 55:8-9
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.