Living a Good Life: Bearing the Image of God, Part 2

Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. As image bearers of our great God, we are hardwired for justice. Yet injustice often seems to reign all around us. It's not surprising to read Solomon's frustration in Ecclesiastes 3 over the abundance of injustice. He also grieves that men have no more power to avoid death than the beasts in the wild. Life under the sun without the self-disclosure from our good Father would leave our hearts to despair over the pain and injustice of this life. But God gives us Himself, and the beautiful truths from His Word change everything.

Let's listen in. This is the second part of the message on Ecclesiastes 3, 16 through 22. It's part of a series on Ecclesiastes called Living a Good Life, Making Sense of the Journey.

It was originally preached on April 8, 2018 at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. This is what Solomon is pointing out, and this notion that we have catapulted God from our knowledge, then the very distinction between life of man and life of beast disappears. And so Solomon observes they have the same breath, they have the same intellectual frame of mind. And this very truth is perpetuated through the proliferation of Darwinism today. And Darwinism as a scientific theory gives intellectual fulfillment for those who refuse to acknowledge God. And that is why today they fight for it and are hostile toward any person or idea that questions the doctrines of materialistic evolution. Indeed, a theory in crisis. That's why they've become hostile because they cannot argue with reason. But beyond that, what are the moral implications when there is no distinction between the life of beast and the life of man?

If there is no distinction, what are the moral implications of that? We're living it today. Dr. Martin Luther King, a follower of Christ, spent his life fighting against injustice. And by the way, April 4th marked the 50th anniversary of his assassination.

But in contrast to that fight for injustice, take German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He heard that a volcanic eruption in 1883 followed a tsunami and destroyed thousands of people. And he wrote a letter to a friend. He said, and quote, 200,000 wiped out at a stroke.

How magnificent. That's the moral implications of when you do not distinguish between the life of beast and the life of man. They all have the same breath. There's no advantage that one has over the other. Nietzsche was just being logically consistent because he didn't believe in God. He concluded that all value judgments are arbitrary. All definitions of justice are based on your culture and your temperament. And that is exactly the mantra that is ruling our justice system today. And we're living it.

And so he says not only do they have the same breath, but he says the man has no advantage over the beast. So it's like you remember when you were young and you played with Legos? If you had that privilege of playing with Legos, you actually built something and used your imagination.

And I remember playing with Legos and you set up and you build these things and you have your empire and you have your characters. And you, in fact, are the mini God over this little empire that you have set up. You're the one that dictates the story. But listen, even though you think you had control of that, that's not what's going on in real life, is it?

You don't control your life because unlike those Legos, you have to factor in human volition. And where there is that human volition, there is wickedness because it is a fallen created order. And where there is that human volition and wickedness, you find people using people for personal advancement or pleasure.

And this is why he says the man has no advantage over the beast. Because where there is that human volition, you will find people using people for one's advancement or personal pleasure. It happens in business, it happens in family, it happens in church. People using other people for their advancement or their pleasure.

And what is that? There is a scourge on our land today and it is the scourge of human trafficking. Where you steal people from their, you lure them from their context and you bring them with a false pretense and then you use them for someone else's pleasure or for your own pleasure. And that is human trafficking.

Listen to me. If I or you use people for your own advancement or pleasure, you are no different than the human trafficker. It's the same thing. And the root of that is having the same intellectual frame of mind and that there's no difference between the life of man and the life of beast. That is life under the sun. And that's no different than the animals that we watch on National Geographic consuming each other for their own survival.

Humans do that too. What a tragedy. If all there is is life under the sun, that's all we have. And this is what Solomon is observing. And so he says, man recognizes that he is dust. Verse 20, all go to one place, all are from the dust and to dust all return. That's all there is.

They all go to one place, man, animal, they all die, they all return to the dust. In other words, we are just material. That's all there is. There's nothing else. There is no knowledge or meaning outside of physical substance. Everything is just matter. You know what that means?

Nothing ultimately matters. Do you see how that's happening today? Do you see how that has happened through history?

Why these people in Kyrgyzstan are justified in building these monuments to these massive tragedies. That's life under the sun. But there's a contrast to that. There's a kind. That's what Solomon observed. And now what is God doing in the children of men, the children of men?

There's a difference here. There are things that God does through wickedness as he tests man and purges out. There are things that God does through wickedness. He is not the author of wickedness, but there are things that he does through wickedness because he is testing man. I said in my heart, God will judge.

I said in my heart, God is testing mankind. Four things that God does through wickedness. Number one, he humbles.

He humbles. He causes us to see our desperate brokenness. He causes us to recognize the delusion of self-sufficiency. God is testing. The second thing he does is he leads people to seek truth.

God does that through wickedness. He leads people to seek truth. Mary Lee Ma, she said this.

She wrote this in World Magazine. To many people, entering Cornell's doctorate program with a full scholarship would be the height of one's self-fulfillment. But during that time, I experienced an existential crisis as I was disillusioned by the lack of integrity and the hypocrisy of academia. I realized academia could be as corrupt as politics or business, so I started to doubt the meaning of life and academic pursuit. But then a few Christian friends reached out to me, including Paul Lee, who is now the chair of business and economics at Wheaton College. He molded for me someone who can lament evil and remain sympathetic to individuals. Something I struggled with. Paul had a moral and intellectual integrity that intrigued me.

I started to wonder what he had that I didn't. And so we started talking more about the Christian faith. He's an academic, but to me, he's a true missionary because his moral example is consistent with the gospel. And through the adversity, through the wickedness that Mary experienced, God led her to seek truth.

And he did so by leading her to an encounter with some of his people. Here's a third thing that God does through wickedness. He leads us to a longing for him, a longing for him when we realize the vacancy and the brokenness of the human experience and that we cannot look to ourselves for our own salvation. We cannot bring in our own utopias. All the conflicts of the 20th century were about bringing in some sort of utopia.

And the 20th century was the bloodiest century on record. Through wickedness, God leads us to a longing for him. One of our missionaries that we support, Tony, he teaches on the radio, and then he invites people to come to discipleship training in Armenia. And he reaches into Iran. I remember having breakfast with him. In 1979, there was a revolution under the Ayatollah Khomeini. And he says, Rich, do you know who the best church planter in Iran was?

The Ayatollah. Because when he brought in the brutal regime, the brutal Islamic regime with Sharia law, people recognized the vacancy of it, the brutality of it, the gracelessness of it. And more churches have started as a result of his revolution. Through wickedness, God leads people to a longing for him. And lastly, through wickedness, God is molding and shaping us and crafting something good in us. God is testing.

God is purging out. We're so glad you've joined us for Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. You can hear this message and others anytime by visiting our website, www.delightingrace.com. You can also check out Pastor Rich's book, Seven Words That Can Change Your Life, where he unpacks from God's Word the very purpose for which you were designed. Seven Words That Can Change Your Life is available wherever books are sold. As always, tune in to Delight in Grace, weekdays at 10 a.m.