Jesus will not have missed any sin or any secret because he is omniscient, he is all-knowing. Jesus will not need to bring witnesses in that courtroom setting because he is omnipresent. He was there when every deed was committed. He will not need any assistance in carrying out his eternal verdict of perfect justice because he is omnipotent.
He is all-powerful. Have you ever felt frustrated when life wasn't fair? Maybe you've worked hard only to watch someone else take the credit, or seen good people suffer while the unjust seem to get ahead.
It's a struggle we all face. Our deep desire for justice often seems to clash with the realities of our world. In today's message, you'll hear how Solomon wrestled with the unfairness of life and what he discovered about God's ultimate justice. Stay tuned to explore why no one truly gets away with wrongdoing and how this truth can bring peace when life feels unjust.
Here's Stephen Davey. When you were growing up, it didn't take you very long to learn a few lessons about life. You probably learned one of those life lessons around the same time you started kindergarten.
You learned it out on the playground. Life isn't perfectly fair. The bigger kids didn't share the swing set or pass the ball when you were wide open. It bothered you, didn't it?
It did me. You might have had older brothers or sisters who enjoyed teaching you that life lesson that life isn't fair every chance they got. Maybe your parents didn't help much either. Maybe they didn't play fair.
Rodney Dangerfield, that great theologian, used to say, when I was a kid, my parents moved a lot, but I always found them. The trouble is life doesn't become fair when you outgrow the playground. We all discover sooner or later that we belong to a very unjust race, the human race.
The cheater at work ends up getting the promotion. Good people don't automatically win. Innocent people sometimes get the blame. Guilty people don't always get caught.
The truth is that bothers us, doesn't it? Romans chapter 2 tells us why. The apostle Paul informs us that we have the law of God written stamped on our hearts, in our consciences, which means that wherever you go in the world, you discover this inborn sense of right and wrong. One author put it this way, our longing for justice is hard-wired into us, how we think and feel. We have a God-created desire for justice. That is until we're the ones pulled over for speeding and then we want mercy and not justice.
But the truth remains, we all have this intuitive desire that the wrong things in the world and in life, that they be made right. Which is why when you hear some news report of justice served, something in your heart and mind says that's great, that's the way it ought to be, it's the way it should be. That's how I felt as I read a recent news report of a cold case that finally got solved. In the early 1960s, a young girl went missing from her hometown streets of Illinois. Tragically, her body was found a few days later. Family was overcome with shock and grief, of course, with a deep desire for justice. Detectives would end up listing just over 100 potential suspects.
None of them panned out. One of them was a 17-year-old young man in the neighborhood, but since his mother provided a rock-solid alibi that he had been with her on the evening in question, he was never interviewed. But 55 years later, on her deathbed, his mother confessed that she had lied.
It had troubled her for 55 years. The cold case was reopened. This young man now in his early 70s, you never outgrow a DNA fingerprint. All the forensic evidence matched him. He was sentenced to life for the rest of his life in prison, and there's something in us that applauds he did not get away with it. That's right.
That's good. What seems to be bothering Solomon as he contemplates before his open journal, The Spirit of God is Influencing Him to Write, is that there are far too many people in the world who seem to be getting away with murder. And every other crime against man and God, no matter how big or small, you take your copy of that private journal, we call it the Book of Ecclesiastes if you're new to our study, let's go back to chapter 3 where we left off as Solomon describes first the problem. We're in chapter 3. When we left off, now we'll pick it back up at verse 16.
Let's start with the first line. Solomon writes, Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness. Now you'll notice right away that he's observing how life is, notice, under the sun, that's his favorite expression, again, for life without any acknowledgement of God. He's going to make some more observations about life under the sun.
This is life on planet earth without God where mankind is keeping the score, and by the way, they don't keep a fair score. And I want you to notice right away that Solomon is not writing about something he's hearing under the sun. This isn't something he's reading in the Jerusalem News and Observer. He says, Let me tell you about what I'm actually seeing.
You notice that? I'm an eyewitness to this stuff, and you can't believe what I've seen. Now he doesn't tell us what specific instances are in mind. He's seeing and speaks in general of gross injustice under the sun. And I want to point out here that what was alarming to Solomon is the fact that he's an eyewitness to wickedness, but it isn't out in the back alley. No, what Solomon is so troubled over isn't the fact that there is wickedness in his hometown, but that there is wickedness, notice, in the place of justice, and that emphasis, even there in the place of justice, even in there, there is wickedness. In the place of justice is a reference to the court of law.
It's the last place you would ever want to see injustice. You don't expect to see injustice in the place of justice. This is, in general terms, a reference to some judge, perhaps, being on a criminal's payroll, or a lawyer misrepresenting, knowingly misrepresenting the facts, or a witness lying under oath, a member of the jury who's been tampered with or maybe even bought off, an innocent person who is framed, a guilty person who goes free. And Solomon is essentially saying, I'm seeing this happen, and it isn't fair, it isn't right. It's not supposed to be how it works in the place of justice.
There are few things in life more upsetting under the sun than when the halls of justice become corridors of corruption. But that isn't all that's bothering Solomon. Notice verse 16 again. Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even in there, was wickedness.
Now notice. And in the place of righteousness, in the place of righteousness, even there, even in there, was wickedness. Now for Solomon, the place that would represent justice was in their fully developed court of law. And the place that would represent righteousness would have been the temple. So the court of law and the house of God, Solomon writes, are filled with evil people who are reversing the core values of each of those institutions. Men and women who are supposed to be representing God and righteousness are representatives of evil. And men and women who represent the law are given to corruption. And of course the law is brought into disrepute, it is diminished, it is disregarded, and the worship of the one true God in this case falls into disrepair.
This would greatly harm the reputation of God. That principle, by the way, is transferable into this dispensation into any church in any generation in this dispensation. It surfaces in the qualifications of men who will serve as deacons and elders. Among other qualities, there to be self-controlled, Paul writes, respectable, not quarrelsome, not lovers of money, and a dozen other qualifications that serve as in 1 Timothy and Titus.
Why? Well, for one thing, because the world the church is attempting to reach can smell corruption quicker than the church. And they'll make the most of it in diluting or disregarding the gospel and the God we represent. Wickedness among church leaders diminishes and distorts the character of God they supposedly represent. So the church, which should be telling the world to repent, it's a tragic reversal when the world starts telling the church to repent. People representing God even beyond the church in nonprofit organizations are held to a higher standard than they should be, and the world is quick to show any hypocrisy.
I remember reading the news a few years ago that a Christian organization promised to build entire communities in a hurricane-devastated area, and they raised a half a billion dollars only to be found later if you have only built less than a dozen houses. That discredits the gospel to a watching world who assumes, and often with glee, that Christians are just as greedy, just as wicked, just as corrupt as they are. To lawbreakers, they delight in finding corruption in the lives of those who represent the law. And though they wouldn't admit it, there's an enjoyment in the revelation of corruption because it makes them only feel better.
And in those cases, the confidence of people at large in justice is diminished, and they become fearful rather than secure. In fact, just recently, in fact, just a few months ago, the serial criminal who had been nicknamed the Golden State Killer was discovered in the late 1970s. He burglarized 100 homes.
He molested 50 women, killed 13 people in this horrific crime spree that lasted a decade. Now, 40 years later, DNA samples in this case had been innocently sent in by extended family members to a genealogy-type organization because they wanted to find out about their family tree. Well, guess who was hiding in the family tree? Their DNA alerted a criminal database system tied into the justice system and alerted authorities with a match or a close match.
Evidently, your extended family carries the same signature. They were able to trace the DNA all the way back to this man, and here he had been hiding away, but to everyone's dismay, this 70-year-old man had served for years as a policeman. See, Solomon is essentially recording what he knows will bother us the most. The problem as he enters it in his journal is that the place of worship, which ought to represent the holiness of God, makes room for wickedness. And the halls of justice and those who represent the law become corridors of corruption, and that's as bad as it can get. But if you look a little closer, there's the implication of a deeper issue with Solomon, and it's this, that everybody in life seems to be getting away with it.
They're getting off scot-free. There aren't DNA samples 3,000 years ago. People are literally getting away with murder and corruption and bribery and religious hypocrisy and immorality and wickedness and crimes untold. Everything is messed up.
In fact, I came across in my study an excavation and translation of a document that had been written 700 years before the birth of Christ. And the individual is unknown, but the scratchings read, I have searched the world for order, justice. Everything is upside down. The divine assembly of the gods are powerless to restore self-order. Life is unfair. Injustice seems to be on the throne, and righteousness and truth seems to have been beaten and run out of town.
Even the gods can't seem to straighten things out. Solomon would invite us to continue reading in his journal. He has delivered to us the problem, and now he delivers to us nothing less than a prophecy, verse 17.
I said in my heart, I had a conversation. I reminded myself, God will judge the righteous and the wicked. That is, he will determine what is right and what is wrong. For there is a time for every matter and for every work. Simply put, God has appointed a time to set things right. It doesn't look like much is happening in an unjust and wicked world. Solomon says one day the universe will shout the news, essentially, that says here comes the judge.
Who is he? We know what Solomon didn't know. The apostle Paul preached to the Athenian leaders there in Athens, and he ended his sermon in Acts 17 by declaring this, God has promised a day when his son will judge the world. Jesus himself said in an earlier sermon in John 5 and verse 22 that the Father has given him the right that is the privilege to judge everything.
So the judgment of all of the deeds of the unredeemed described for us in Revelation chapter 19 of that great white throne that is that great throne of purity. Solomon knows a day of judgments coming, we're told that it is actually the Son of God who will do the judging. Did Solomon know about this coming day? He knew. He probably heard a verse often delivered and expounded upon from Moses where the question is answered or asked, and the rhetorical answer is yes, shall not the judge of all the earth do what is right?
And the answer is yes. Later on Moses will announce God will not allow the guilty to go unpunished. Solomon knew the truth that mankind has an appointment with their creator God. Did he believe it? Well, it might surprise you to read, if you go over to the very last verse of his journal, if you go over to chapter 12 and look at the very last statement he writes, he writes this in Ecclesiastes 12 and verse 14, for God will bring every deed in the judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
That's how convinced he was of it. Solomon knew that one day all the unredeemed will be resurrected to stand at the appointed day of divine justice where the hosts of heaven will essentially announce with that thunderous announcement, literally all rise, all rise, and there will be a resurrection of all the unredeemed before that throne and that judge. And to the utter dismay of millions, if not billions, that judge will be none other than Jesus Christ, the resplendent, glorious Son of God. And when the Son of God takes his seat behind that bench, the ruling of that pure and holy court will unveil, Solomon writes, even the secrets, even those that never did get caught as they hid in the family tree. Even every secret in your heart and mine, there will be no partiality, there will be no favoritism and think of the horror of standing there where there will be absolute and perfect justice. Jesus will not have missed any sin or any secret because he is omniscient, he is all-knowing. Jesus will not need to bring witnesses in that courtroom setting because he is omnipresent. He was there when every deed was committed. He will not need any assistance in carrying out his eternal verdict of perfect justice because he is omnipotent. He is all-powerful. Solomon is essentially prophesying to us that no one is going to get away with anything.
What hope do any of us have? Well, according to the gospel account, as it's fleshed out for us, there are two options in light of God's coming justice. According to the Bible, you will either stand before God in your sin and be judged as guilty and sent to hell as a just verdict for sin against the holy God, or at some point while you still live and breathe, you will have asked Jesus Christ to pardon you, to save you from the just penalty of your sin, to have come to some point in your life where you understand the gospel and you ask him for that free gift which you could never pay for anyway. You then will avoid that great white throne and be granted instead entrance into heaven.
Those are the only two options, guilty or pardoned. The Bible says, it is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment. We're going to have a personal appointment with God, Hebrews 9-27.
When we stand before God, having either rejected his gospel of conscience, his gospel of creation, or for those who heard it, the gospel of Christ, there will only be these two options. There will be no time to make an appeal to his mercy. That appeal must be made to his mercy now while you're still breathing.
If you have not already, let me invite you today while you still have life and breath and opportunity. Admit your guilt and your sin and lay claim on that promise. If you confess your sin, he is faithful and just to forgive your sin and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Trust him alone and ask, claim that promise of salvation for whosoever shall call upon the name of the God shall be saved. Solomon describes the problem and he delivers this prophecy.
The problem is everybody seems to be getting away with everything. The prophecy is nobody is getting away with anything. Everyone will have their appointment with God and for the unbeliever, there will be no appeal. For the believer, they will have an advocate. Someone who will say, that one, my blood covered their sin. They laid claim to the promise. I'm their savior.
I'm that one's advocate. But for now, Solomon writes in his journal, it looks like people are getting away with sin. But according to the Bible and God's plan for human history, it's simply a matter of time.
Just a matter of time before God makes everything right. Paul Harvey illustrated this point when he told about a man named Gary Tyndall who was charged with robbery while standing in the California courtroom of Judge Rodriguez. Tyndall asked permission to go to the bathroom.
The judge said yes. I don't know, gave him that big wooden hall pass or whatever. He was escorted upstairs to the bathroom on the second floor. The bathroom door was guarded while he was inside. He had determined to escape. He climbed up some exterior plumbing pipes, opened a panel in the ceiling, climbed up on top of those panels and began making his way. He crawled some 30 feet and then the ceiling panels broke under his weight. He dropped to the floor right in the middle of that courtroom in front of the bench of Judge Rodriguez.
It was only a short crawl before he was in front of the judge. According to the Bible, the only legal maneuver you have in light of the coming judge is to settle out of court. Settle out of court. Accept the offer of Jesus Christ who will pardon you. He will represent you as your advocate when you take him as Lord and Savior.
Settle out of court and avoid the horror of this prophecy in facing the wrath of God as an unpardoned sinner and instead enjoy the grace of God forever. Thank you for listening today. Remember, God's justice is always on time. When life may seem unfair, there's comfort in knowing God will make everything right. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey.
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