Read Ecclesiastes 8:16–17
Questions from the Scripture text: What did Solomon apply (v16)? To know what? And to see what? How much res did he take? But what did he end up seeing (v17)? And concluding about it? What might a man do? But what can he still not do? What sort of man might say (more literal than NKJ ‘attempts’) that he knows it? But what is this man not even able to do?
How much of God’s work can man figure out? Ecclesiastes 8:16–17 prepares us for the hearing of God’s Word,
publicly read, in the holy assembly on the coming Lord’s Day. In these two
verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that man cannot even
begin to find out all of God’s work, let alone comprehend it all.
One necessary ingredient of happiness is humility. We've the conclusion
that, if you receive your eating your food as a gift from God, your drink as a
gift from God, your being merry as a gift from God, your laboring as a gift
from God, every day of your life as a gift from God, that this is the key to
true happiness (v15). Because God Himself is the answer for all the things that
make man miserable. And now we see that a big part of remembering you Creator
is not to think that you have your Creator figured out, but to think that your
Creator has you (and everything else) figured out. Even with sleepless application
of oneself (v16), it is utterly impossible to begin examining the scope of God’s
work (v17a), let alone understand it (v17b).
Our pride endangers us of trying to have your happiness in God by thinking
that the extent of our theological understanding of Him (and His will and His
work) is what will make us happy. But we cannot comprehend God, so it is
foolish to think that we will achieve happiness by intellectual, theological
achievement. This is what Solomon has discovered in v16–17. If you could trace
all the things that men do (v16a). And if you could sleeplessly trace all those
things that all men sleeplessly do (v16b), you still wouldn't begin to scratch
the surface of the work of God. Because everything that all men do, taken all
together, is this infinitesimal little component of the whole of the work that
God is doing in His sovereign providence (v17a).
So, not only is it impossible to comprehend all of the work that men do
under the sun, but this impossible quantity is itself an insignificant fraction
of what one would have to know in order to comprehend all that is happening. The total amount of all that man could potentially know is not
even a rounding error in the equation of the work of God. Even if a man
labors to discover it, he cannot not find it (v17a). And if the wisest man says
that he knows it (a more literal translation than NKJ’s “attempts”), still he
is not able even to find it, let alone to analyze what he has found. The one
who says that he has it all figured out is either self-deceived in saying that
he knows it, or he is lying, deceiving others in saying that he knows it.
No human wisdom can figure out everything that God is doing. The New
Testament often uses the word “mystery” to refer to parts of God’s redemptive
plan that man could never have discovered—but that God has
been pleased to explain to us. It is good for us to remember that there remains
an infinity that He has kept to Himself—and that is the perfectly safe place
for those things to be kept. You don’t have to “leave it all with God”—it is
already there!
We should apply this to our life prospectively: don't think that your
happiness will come from figuring out what God is doing. Instead, your
happiness will be bound up in knowing that God Himself has what He Himself is
doing all figured out. God knows how all things fit together. There is great
happiness there is in knowing this, with your heart embracing Christ and His
cross (cf. Rom 8:32), so that you are always sure that God intends and knows it
all for good (cf. Rom 8:28).
Also retrospectively, if God permits you to see a little glimpse of
part of the wisdom of how He has put everything together, be careful. Do not
let yourself think things like, “now I know why God did this.” You don't. You
maybe glimpse an infinitesimal little sliver of why God did it. And that sliver
might not even be understood or perceived accurately. And what you do perceive,
you do not fully understand. And what you do understand is a tiny little
component of the whole.
So, instead of “now I understand
why God did this,” you could say, “now I remember that God is infinitely wiser
and infinitely more good than I am; how kind of him to show me again! How His
wisdom is beyond my finding out, and His goodness is without measure!”
Thus, such rememberings further develop that humility which is
necessary unto biblical contentment. It is sweet and peaceful to “develop” into
that weaned child, who meddle with things that are too lofty for him, but who
knows that he can trust his Heavenly Father (cf. Ps 131).
Humility is necessary to happiness. It is the cure for anxiety and
worry. We know so little. But the One Who is our happiness, and Who gives us
our food, our drink, our merriment, our labor—Who gives us every day of our
life—He knows everything. And we trust it to Him.
In what, in God’s providence, have
you enjoyed glimpsing His wisdom and goodness? How can you respond to it in a
way that develops more happiness by admitting how little of that wisdom you
have even seen thus far?
Sample prayer: Our gracious God and our heavenly Father, We pray that You would help us to learn this lesson of humility, and not to think that figuring You out is what makes us happy. Rather, give us to realize that trusting You, and having You as our happiness, is what makes us happy. So be our happiness, we ask, and give us humility by Your Spirit, we ask through Your Son, the Lord Jesus, our Savior. Amen!
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