Even with his wisdom, there were things Solomon couldn't understand. Like how a good God could allow injustice. Have you wondered the same thing? Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah examines the danger of trying to make God fit our own ideas about justice, fairness, and the world.
From Searching for Heaven on Earth, here's David to introduce when your world doesn't make sense. You know, there's a wonderful way to answer a question that people ask when you're having a discussion with them. When they say they don't believe in God, You say, Are you sure you don't believe in God? And then I like to ask him this question: How much of all of the knowledge of the whole world from time to eternity do you think you know? And they look at you like, What do you mean?
How much of all knowledge, potential and actual, do you know? And they'll say, Well, maybe. 5% or 2%. And then I like to ask him: Do you think God might exist in the 95% that you don't know? And uh they look sort of surprised because you see, to say there is no God is to say that we know everything that could ever be known, both actual and possible.
And of course, you and I both know that's not uh reality. And in the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon deals with some questions that are like that. Questions that just simply don't make sense, and how do you get answers to them?
Well, we're going to find out about that as we study this together and talk about when your world doesn't make sense. If you live in a world that always makes sense, you're living in a different world than I am. My world sometimes just doesn't make sense. But I also realize in my heart that God always makes sense. And when you get back to God, you begin to see how these things fit together.
Solomon will sort of lead us in that direction as we open our Bibles together today to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to Alaska in July. I like to tell you about that as early as I can. The dates are 12th through 19th of July, and we'll be visiting all the very special places in that beautiful, beautiful state. And we know that if you've been there, you'll want to go again.
And if you've never been there, you have a wonderful treat ahead of you. Alaska is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I've been there over 35 times, and I keep going back because it's got a magnet in it that just draws me every year to be there with the friends of Turning Point. I hope you'll come and go with us this year, July 12th through the 19th. That's Turning Point, Alaska.
It's our wonderful conference cruise for this year. And now here is part one of When Your World Doesn't Make Sense. The story is told of the factory that had a problem with employee theft. Valuable items were being stolen from the factory every day, and so they hired a security firm. to search every employee as he left at the end of each workday.
Most of the workers willingly went along with the emptying of their pockets and having their lunch boxes checked. But one man would go through the gate every day at closing time with a wheelbarrow full of trash, and the exasperated security guard. would have to spend a half hour while everyone else was waiting in line. Digging through the food wrappers. The cigarette butts and the styrofoam cups to see if anything valuable was being smuggled out of the factory.
He never found anything. Finally, one day, the guard could no longer stand it. He said to the men, Look, I know you're up to something every day. I check every last bit of trash in the wheelbarrow, and I never find anything worth stealing. It's driving me crazy.
Tell you what I'll do. You tell me what you're up to, and I promise I won't report you. Man shrugged his shoulders and said, I'm stealing wheelbarrows. How often we look at life like the security guard. We missed the most obvious.
Because it's surrounded With the unimportant.
Solomon in his journal we call Ecclesiastes is not going to let us do that. He's pointing out the obvious to us, and he's driving us to consider the important things in life. What we're learning in the book of Ecclesiastes is that meaning in life is an elusive target for most people. One brother can experience it while the other completely misses it. Just when we think we have arrived, we discover that we are not where we had hoped to be.
So far, Solomon has taught us.
Some things for sure. Number one, In the first two chapters, there's no real meaning in life without God. All that we attempt without him leaves us grasping for the wind. There is no profit. But he's also honest enough to remind us that even when we have God in our lives, there can be problems if we try to make him fit our own concepts about life and reality.
Remember, his plan is good, his purpose is clear, but his program is mysterious. We are going to examine five areas that caused him to struggle. These five concerns are not buried in Solomon's culture, but they are just as up-to-date as our own world. As Solomon continues to make his observations about life, His honesty at some times is almost brutal. He just looks us right in the eye and says, this is the way it is.
Four times in the section of scripture that we're going to study today that begins with the 16th verse of the third chapter. Four times Solomon is going to say the phrase, I saw. You will see it in chapter 3, verse 16. Moreover, I saw under the sun. Again in chapter 4 and verse 4, again I saw, he said.
Verse 7 he says, Then I returned and I saw vanity under the sun. In 15 of chapter 4, he says, I saw all the living who walk under the sun. You can see what.
Solomon is doing is making observations about what he sees. He's looking at life and he's writing down what he sees. And he's trying to be honest about what he sees and how he responds to it. After he writes down what he sees, He begins to think about it. And if you go back through the text again, you'll discover some phrases that help you understand how he's internalizing what he sees.
For instance, in chapter 3, verse 17, he says, I said in my heart. Uses that same phrase again in verse 18. In verse 22 of chapter 3, he says, So I perceived, so when I saw this, this is what I thought. In chapter 4 and verse 1, he says, Then I returned and I considered.
Solomon is observing. And then he's thinking. He's seeing things in life that he can't comprehend, but he doesn't stop there. He looks at it, he evaluates it honestly, and then he thinks about what it means.
Now, there's a verse of scripture, and I think I need to go there because it's such an important verse to understand Ecclesiastes. It's clear at the end of the book in chapter 12, and this will help you understand what Solomon is doing. He says, The words of the wise are like goads. You know what a goad is? It was a stick that had a little nail on the end of it, and the shepherd would use that to spur the sheep along, to keep them in line.
He would goad them to move. But notice it says, and the words of the scholars are like well-driven nails given by one shepherd in the scripture. capitalizes the word shepherd.
So, I want you to think about this. There are goads that come from the wise men, and there are nails that come from God.
Solomon goads us with his questions. He nails us with what God has to say about them.
So, along the way, as we look at these several issues that he brought up in this particular section of his journal. There's some things that'll kind of goad us. But then there are a few things along the way that will also nail us. The nails are from God, the goads are from the wisdom of men. You got that?
So now let's go back to chapter 3. And in verses 16 through 22, Solomon is going to goad us with the problem of faulty justice. Notice in verse 16 what Solomon saw. He said, Moreover, I saw under the sun in the place of judgment, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, Iniquity was there, faulty justice.
Solomon saw what you and I see every day on television and read about every day in our newspapers.
So guilty, go free. The innocent suffer. The wicked prosper in their sin, and the righteous suffer in their obedience. People are set free because they have money to buy their way out of trouble. And some poor guy who just happens to be in the wrong place at the right time gets sent to jail for something he didn't do.
If God is good. Where's all the justice? That's a goad, isn't it?
Sometimes it drives you crazy. If a world's supposed to run right, why is there so much unjustice in the world? People getting off when we all know they're guilty. People getting convicted when we know they're innocent. Why does that happen?
Well, Solomon's got a few nails for us in this one. Here's what he said in verses 17 through 21. He says, Let me try to sort this out for you with some wisdom that will help you understand how to deal with faulty justice. First of all, remember. Judgment is coming.
Verse 17, I said in my heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked. For there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.
Solomon observes that there will be a time of judgment when justice will prevail. God's judgment will be according to the secrets of men's hearts, and there is no partiality with God. He has already scheduled the judgment, and every man will have his day in court. That's what Solomon wants us to know. Just because we don't see it happening now doesn't mean it's not going to happen.
Ecclesiastes 8:6 says, Because for every matter there is a time and judgment. Though the misery of man increases greatly, Sometimes people say, well, They got away with it. And they're going to get away with it. Oh no, you don't ever get away with it. Listen to Ecclesiastes 8:11.
Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily. Therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Just because you don't see the judgment coming right now, Solomon says, don't think there is no judgment. Yes, justice is. Upside down sometimes, but you don't see the whole picture unless you carry it clear out to the end when one day God's going to set it all straight.
You got that?
That's the first male. Judgment is coming. Nail number two is death is certain.
Solomon is going to go on a little Rabbit trail here that we'll have to follow quickly. I said in my heart concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals. For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals. One thing befalls them, as one dies, so dies the other. Surely they all have one breath.
Man has no advantage over animals for all his vanity. All go to one place and are all from the dust and all return to the dust.
Now, I need to tell you before we go any further, this is a passage of Scripture. The critics of the Bible just love. They love it because they think they understand what it means, but they don't. The nail that Solomon drives here into this whole matter of faulty justice is the inevitability of death.
Now watch carefully his reasoning. It may seem as if the rich and the powerful always have the upper hand when it comes to justice and equity. But remember, he says, they will all die exactly the same way that you do. In fact, he goes out of his way to say that man, as far as his physical being is concerned, dies in the very same way as an animal dies. In two ways, we are like the animals.
We die as they do, our bodies return to dust as theirs do.
Now, this is not saying, as some critics of the Bible would have us believe, that we die and that's the end.
Solomon's talking here about our physical bodies. When we die, what happens? Our bodies go in the ground. They return to the dust. Our spirit and our soul goes to heaven.
Don't sit back and think somebody got away with something and that they're not going to be judged because judgment is coming and death is certain. And you're going to die just like anyone else. We all are even when it comes to that subject. Last I knew, the percentages were 100%. Everybody dies, right?
Everybody. The rich, the powerful, the poor. The ones who oppress and the ones who are oppressed.
Solomon says it's all even at the grave. But he does not say that we die as dogs. For he goes on in verse 21 to say, Who knows the spirit of the sons of men which go upward? And the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth. See the difference?
The spirit of a man goes upward. In fact, later on in the book, Solomon makes that very clear. He understands what's going on here. If you look at Ecclesiastes 12 and verse 7, he says this: Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. That's what happens when we die.
Our bodies go in the grave, our spirit goes to God.
Solomon understands that, so he's not teaching here. That men are just higher forms of animals, and that we all die and we go to the grave. That's what the critics would like to say. This says, it doesn't say that. Read the whole book for Pete's sake.
He says, judgment is coming. Death is certain. And now the third nail is in verse 22. He says, life continues.
Now he says, so you see some justice out there that isn't right. Don't mess up your whole life because of that. Don't walk around saying, well, it's not worth living because look at this, this is wrong, that's wrong. No, he says, first remember, everybody's going to be judged. Everybody's gonna die.
So, what do you do between now and the judgment? Notice verse 22.
So, I perceive that nothing is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works. For that is his heritage. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him? Once again, we are reminded, friends, that life continues in spite of our questions, in spite of the inequities, and in spite of all the stuff we don't understand. We may not be able to resolve all the conflicts, but while we wait for the resolution, we should rejoice in our own works and leave the future up to God.
Can I get a witness? Amen. A poet put it this way. God holds the key of all unknown, and I am glad. If other hands should hold the key, or if he trusted it to me, I might be sad.
I cannot read his future plans, but this I know. I have the smiling of his face and all the refuge of his grace while here below. Amen. I've got the smiling of his face and all the refuge of his grace. While I'm trying to figure out how to get from the injustice I just saw.
to the ultimate resolution that's going to come someday. The problem of faulty justice.
Now, notice the second goad that Solomon brings up is in chapter 4, verses 1 to 3: the problem of fierce oppression. Then I returned and I considered all the oppression that is done under the sun and look. the tears of the oppressed, but they have no comforter. On the side of the oppressors there is power, but they have no comforter. Therefore I praise the dead who are already dead, more than the living who are still alive.
Yet better than both is he who has never existed, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun. This is a tough goad. Listen to this.
Solomon now records what he saw when he observed the oppression of the world. Here he is talking about the weak and the helpless of the world who are victimized by society. who have no hope of anything ever being different. for them.
Solomon speaks of their tears, and twice he observes that they have no one to comfort them. On the side of the oppressors there is power, but who do the oppressed ever turn to? Simon Weisenthal wrote a book about his examination of the Nazi concentration camps And in one part in his book, He explains why he stopped believing in God the way he used to believe in God. He said he was in a camp where a Nazi commander brought two Jews and put them back to back. Shackling their arms in handcuffs so that their heads were back to back.
Then he took his revolver, he put it in the mouth of the one man and he shot it. It killed the man. and it killed the man behind him. And he turned to his corporals and he said, It told you you're wasting too many bullets, you can kill two with one. And Weisendalf said, when I saw the oppression, and the wickedness and the injustice of that.
I couldn't comprehend it and I turned from God. And if you don't understand the word of God and the sovereignty of God and the purposes of God, you cannot blame that man. Nor do you.
Solomon's conclusion about the oppressed is that they would have been better off if they had never been born. As he looked at the awfulness of life, The work of evil done under the sun is so great, he said, that one would choose not to be born if it was such a choice that he could have. This was the sentiment that Job had. You remember how Job faced the problems in his life? When he lost all of his family, you remember the oppression of Job?
One day he was sitting on top of. He was the catbird on the mountain, and the next day he had lost everything. All of his wealth, all of his possessions, all of his cattle, all of his family. The only one that was left to him was his wife, and she proved to be quite a liability later on. And Job, in the midst of it all, said, May the day perish that I was born.
and the night in which it was said a male child is conceived Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came from the womb?
So what do you say to someone like that? That's the question Solomon raises. You know what? Preachers never raise questions like that. We try to stay away from them.
Those are the hard things about the gospel, the hard things about Christianity. What do you say to people who are oppressed?
Well, you know what, we've learned sometimes it's all right to say we don't know. We don't understand. Our minds are so Finite, we can't comprehend the corporate purposes of God in His world. But there is an interesting thought that I want to share with you, though Solomon does not share it here. When David was dealing with the same issue in one of the Psalms, Psalm 73, talking about why the wicked prosper.
He comes to this conclusion. He says, until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then I understood. If you try to understand the purposes in this world using your own wisdom, your own ways of thinking things through, you're going to see a lot of things that you can't merge. You can't get them to come into sync.
And some things you will never be able to resolve. One thing you must remember: that in the things you can't resolve, you must continue to trust God, knowing that someday the resolution will come. even though it is not there now.
Solomon said, I saw the oppressed. And I want you to know what I saw. There's a lot of things in this life that are bad. A lot of things that are hard and evil. We don't do ourselves any favors by turning our back and acting like they're not there.
Pollyanna is not a good prescription for life. You face the issues, and then sometimes you step back and say, Lord God, I don't comprehend this. I don't know why all of the suffering is going on. I don't know why there's so much evil, but I know this. It wasn't here before the Garden of Eden.
And it's come through humanity through our own selfishness and sin. God is not responsible. And that's all we can say. Notice the third goad. The problem of financial rivalry.
Here's one that's very contemporary, and all you guys are sitting out here from the corporate world, you'll comprehend this immediately. Verses 4 through 6: the problem of financial rivalry.
Now, watch this. He said, And I saw that for all toil and every skillful work, a man is envied by his neighbor. This also is vanity and grasping for the win.
Solomon could have been filing an article for the USA Today or the Wall Street Journal. He summarizes the driving motivation in today's workplace. Men do not work so that they can have things or for comfort, they work so that they can be the envy of their neighbors. They want the car not because it's better, but because everybody will say, whoa, look at that car. They're all excited about Being one step ahead of everybody else that's around them.
They're in this financial rivalry, this competition. Newsweek magazine carried an article about what drives people in Washington, D.C. Listen to this.
Ambition is the raving and insatiable beast that most often demands to be fed in this town. The setting is less likely to be some posh restaurant or glitzy nightclub than a wholly unremarkable glass office building or an inner sanctum somewhere in the federal complex. The reward in the transaction is frequently not currency at all, but power, perks, and ego massage. For this, the whole conglomeration of psychological payoffs, there are people who will sell almost anything, including their self-respect, if they have any. And they will also give up the well-being of thousands.
to get to their goal. Elliot Richardson, the Attorney General, who resigned rather than dismissed Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. at President Nixon's request, wrote this about the late President Richard Nixon. He said, Richard Nixon's great weakness was the approach to life that came out of his battle to achieve station, influence, power, all the things he felt that he had not been accorded as a youth. He had an insecurity, an insecurity that eventually propelled him to the presidency by his aggression, his suspicion, his vindictiveness, his retaliation, and so forth.
He viewed every opponent as an enemy, and he never understood when he had won. An unhealthy craving for power, influence, and all the trimmings leave men in a quiet life of desperation.
So some people look at that and they say, well, I'm not going there. I'm not going to do that.
So, notice Solomon says some of them take the other extreme. The fool folds his hands and consumes his own flesh.
Some people saw this runaway ambition for what it was back in the 60s. They decided the answer was to drop out. But Solomon observes that this too is the wrong answer. The answer is not to be driven to get more than anybody else has or to drop out of life. Notice he says If you do this, you consume your own flesh.
He describes what happens when we respond to ambition by dropping out. We end up consuming our own lives, our resources are gone. Our self-respect is gone. Drugs consume our ability to think, and we end up sleeping on the streets and begging for food. We consume our own lives.
No, Solomon says there's a better way to this, and here's the nail. Notice verse 6, better a handful with quietness. Then both hands fold together with toil and grasping for the win. What's he talking about? Get a little balance in your life.
You don't have to have it all, but you gotta have some of it. Uh You don't have to be at the top level on the 25th floor sitting in the CEO's office, but you don't want to be on the street either. Get a little balance. Boy, that is a wonderful thing to pursue, isn't it? Balance.
It's not something we're all very good at.
Solomon urges us in his writing to make that a goal. Hey, it's the weekend ahead of us, and so I need to tell you the Turning Point is available across the country and around the world on television. We reach almost every part of the United States without exception, and we are in many, many places around the world. Find us. You'll be blessed by the program.
It's a lot different than the radio program, and it will take you to another place in the Bible and encourage you through God's Word. Also, don't forget to get to church on Sunday. This is a really important time in your life, and you need to be with God's people under the sound teaching of the Word of God. Hey, and if you're in Canada, don't forget when you send your money to Turning Point, it stays in Canada. It doesn't come here to the United States.
It helps underwrite the programming in Canada, and we're so grateful for it. Thank you, Canadians, for your faithfulness to God and your help with the reaching out of His truth. The message you just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Turning Point is also on radio and TV this weekend.
To learn where to find it, visit our website davidjeremiah.org/slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's book, 31 Days to Happiness. It's filled with Solomon's wisdom and it's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard New International and New King James Versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr.
Jeremiah's decades of study. Your notes of encouragement mean so much, so please write to Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us Monday as we continue searching for heaven on earth on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
I'm going to use a bottle of the same method.
