Read Ecclesiastes 9:1–6
Questions from the Scripture text: In where did Solomon consider these things (v1)? Why? In Whose hands are who and what? What can’t people know, from what? What differences do not determine one’s providence (v2)? What seems evil (v3)? What is the spiritual condition of men? For whom is there still hope (v4)? By what illustration does he make this point? What do the living know (v5a)? Who does not know this (v5b)? What other interactions with this world do they no longer have (v5c–6)?
How should we live, since we are subject to the providence of God? Ecclesiastes 9:1–6 prepares us for the hearing of God’s Word, publicly read, in the holy assembly on the coming Lord’s Day. In these six verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that under the providence of God, we should live as those who remember that we must be right with Him before we die.
In the previous portion (8:16–17), we noted the humility that we need since man is unable to tell the work of God. And now in v1–6, we see how to live in light of the fact that God rules over all things in sovereign providence: work while you're alive (cf. Jn 9:4). Serve the Lord.
In v1, he warns against trying to interpret things by providence: “People know neither love nor hatred by anything they see before them.” One of the great mistakes of Job's friends was that they concluded, from the trials that Job was going through, that God was against him. They couldn't have been more wrong. God was more pleased with Job than He was with anyone else on the earth. And although Job was going through much affliction, the Lord was doing Job great good through that affliction, even through Satan's most fierce enmity against Job.
Do not conclude from ease that one is favored by God, or from affliction that one is opposed by God. You know neither love nor hatred by what you see before you.
The biggest example of this is death; the wicked ultimately die; the righteous also ultimately die (v2). So, do not conclude, from someone's death, that he must have been worse than other people. The best example of this, perhaps, is Jesus’s answers in Luk 13:1–5.
So, on the one hand, man thinks that it is an “evil” thing, that one thing happens to all (v3a). It seems to him like it's not fair. How come these wicked people die, but these righteous people die just like the wicked people died? And part of the answer is there are no righteous people: “the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil (v3b). Madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that, they go to the dead (v3c). So every living person in this world has folly in his heart, and the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil. We all deserve death.
Is there a difference between the godly and the ungodly? There is, and Solomon has covered that on a number of occasions already in the book of Ecclesiastes. There's a difference in what comes of them, and there's a difference in how they live. The difference in how they live is that they remember their Creator. They receive everything as a gift from Him and an assignment from Him. They do everything as a service to Him. But they go through affliction just as much, often more, than the wicked go through affliction. And they may die. They may die early. They may die in a very painful and horrific way. And you should not conclude that they are somehow less favored by God or less godly or less clean or less properly religious or less moral because of the manner in which they die. That's a superstition that belongs to people who don't understand that we are sinners, and that the wages of sin is death, and that what differentiates is in the heart, and in the mind, in one's relationship with the Lord.
For him who is joined to all the living, there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion (v4). What does that mean? Well, that means that as long as someone has not yet died, he can still repent. While there's life, there's hope.
So instead of thinking judgmentally about people because of what's happening to them, remember that it is a mercy that God has not yet killed them. God may yet bring them to repentance. So pray for their repentance, plead with them for their repentance. And do what you can to bring them under the means of grace, because the only hope of their repentance is the God of grace, and the grace of that God. And so, whatever condition they're actually in, the desire is that they would come to repentance before they die because it is appointed to man to die once and after that, the judgment. There's no more repenting, no more serving God, no more doing others good in this world once you die (v5).
Each one of us must grapple with the fact, must deal with the fact that we will die, we will leave this world. While you are alive, you have the opportunity to respond rightly to that. Become right with God through faith in Jesus Christ, Whose righteousness alone can be our righteousness with God, Whose sacrifice alone can take away our sin so that our death will not be a penalty for our sin, but the means by which God delivers him from all the evils, all the harms, all the pain, the affliction that is in this world.
The living know that they will die. Sadly, there are a lot of people who live as if they don't realize that they're going to die. They don't seek the Lord Jesus Christ, and His righteousness, and His sacrifice, that they may be right with God. For many, walking with God, doesn't matter to them. But that's not how the living should live. The living should live as those who know that they will die and live in light of the day of their death.
The dead know nothing. They have no more reward. Memory of them is forgotten (v5). Their love, hatred, envy have now perished; never more will they have a share in anything done under the sun (v6). The dead do not contemplate what they are going to do; they are done doing. But how dreadful that there are so many who are alive, but still do not contemplate what they are going to do.
And so we must live as those who do not presume to know from affliction, or the lack of it, what one's condition is with God. But we must live as those who deal with God directly—especially in and through our Lord Jesus Christ—not drawing conclusions about ourselves or about others based upon what happens to us.
How often do you meditate upon your upcoming death? How are you living in response to that? What changes do you think you should make?
Sample prayer: Sample prayer: Father, we pray that You would give us to live conscientiously aware of You, and of the shortness of our life, and the certainty of death. Give us, then, to live by faith in Christ, through Whom we ask it. Amen!
Suggested songs: ARP23B “The Lord’s My Shepherd” or TPH131B “Not Haughty Is My Heart”
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