Scripture: Ecclesiastes 6:1-6
Date: December 24, 2006
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.
Well take out your copy of God’s Word and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 6. Last week I had great intentions to cover two paragraphs Finishing up chapter 5 and then moving into chapter 6. I had intended to be finished with chapter 6 verses 1 through 6 already But nevertheless, that’s how it goes and first your money then your clothes That’s what my mom always used to say. So anyway, I think that’s great because it’s going to give us the opportunity to cover one through six which is just the opposite of verses eighteen through twenty in chapter five. This is the exact opposite problem of what is good and fitting and beautiful.
In the paragraph we studied last week, this is the opposite side. This is the worst that it could be. And this is not enjoying the process. is loathing the process and it’s so significant what we’re going to find here because it’s not the people who don’t have anything who loathe the process. It’s not just the poor, it’s not just the people who are sick, it’s not the unpopular who loathe the process. You know who loathe the process? People who have it all. But they’re missing one thing. And we’ll have to see what that is. So Ecclesiastes chapter 6 verses 1 through 6 loathing the process, and as it is just the negative, the opposite to the positive we saw last week, let’s read both of these paragraphs together and then remind ourselves of where we’ve been.
Look back then at chapter 5 verse 18, Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment, and all the toil with which one toils under the the Son the few days of His life that God has given Him, for this is His lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, do not miss that phrase. That is just as much a gift. It is not just the wealth and the possessions that are a gift from God. The power to enjoy them is also a gift. a gift from the sovereign God, and accept his lot and rejoice in his toil, this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart. However, there is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind, a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity. It is a grievous evil.
If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he He has no burial, I say, that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good, do not all go to the one place. The opposites are either the superlative prospect of joy in toil or the worst possibility of misery in toil. Those are the two choices that are set before each and every one of us and every person who has ever lived at any time in any place.
There is either the superlative, the best prospect. nothing better than this. Joy in toil. You either get that satisfaction and meaning out of life from God, or you absolutely hate the process under the sun. It is vanity. It is empty. It is meaningless. It is useless. And you might have everything you could have possibly ever dreamed for. If you do not have the gift of God to enjoy it, it’s empty. The evil of misery in toil is what we’re going to talk about this morning. But remember last week we talked about the gift of joy in toil. We saw the observation of it, the provision of it, and the gifts from the giver and the ultimate effect being that, look, time flies, not just when you’re having fun, but when you have the gift of God to enjoy your time.
just flies. You’re not even going to remember. You’re not going to care how sure your life was. You’re not going to be bitter by all the bad things that happen. If God gives you the gift of joy in your work, nothing can touch that. And you’ll get to the end of your life however long you live, and there will be such a sweetness and such a satisfaction because you have gotten what God wanted you to have during your time here, and you’ve enjoyed that. You weren’t upset that you didn’t get something else, your life is not looking to something else that is still unfulfilled. If you enjoy the process as a gift of God, you’re not looking to anything else. Absolutely amazing. And the fact is, and I mentioned some stats to you at the beginning of last week about teenagers spending $195 billion a year on relatively silly stuff, why are they doing that? Is it really because they have all this money in their pockets that’s just coming out and they don’t know what to do with it and they don’t have any better idea? Or is it in fact because they’re looking for satisfaction in
that next thing? They’re looking for satisfaction in the iPod. They’re looking for satisfaction satisfaction in the video game system. They’re looking for satisfaction in the perfume, in the clothes, in entertaining themselves. They think that that is going to be what makes them happy. And it very well may be that God would let you have some extra cash. You could buy that nice sweater that you wanted, or you could go to a movie and enjoy that. And It may very well be that all that stuff is okay, but it’s not okay if you are looking to that to satisfy your heart. I said, I just don’t buy that you’re not thinking about money.
Your spending habits prove that you are thinking about money to some degree or another, as well as the fact that I don’t actually know a lot of young people who are just so overflowing, over-brimming with joy and happiness. you’re trying to find that joy, I’m guessing that the reason that most aren’t that joyful is because you’re not looking in the right place. Specifically then, you’re not looking to God. And so this is a paragraph, a couple paragraphs that are intended to cut off our pursuits of joy in the wrong places and get us back to focusing on God. And looking to Him for the gifts, but valuing him as the giver even more than whatever he gives or doesn’t give.
It comes back to the whole broken cistern versus the living fountain discussion from last year’s snow retreat. And too many of us have still got our heads down in that broken, dry, dirty, empty cistern, sucking out what we can to try to get satisfaction and it is a foregone conclusion that you are going to come back up from that more thirsty than when you went down. It’s no wonder that we’re not satisfied, because we’re trying to get that satisfaction from a place that can’t provide it. And in fact, everything under the sun, absolutely everything under the sun is a broken cistern, if that is what you seek to get your joy from.
Solomon now moving into this second paragraph, talking about the evil of misery in toil first gives us a reflection on it in verses 1 and 2. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind, a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires yet. God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity. It is a grievous evil. Notice first his contemplation of this misery in verse 1. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun that lies heavy on mankind. The introduction there, there is, is a typical way for Solomon to introduce something that that he has seen, something that he has observed.
You know, a lot of commentators think that this is actually Solomon talking about his own experience, not just something that he saw somebody else go through, but something that he himself went through just talking about it like it was another person. And we know that Solomon had all the stuff he could have possibly wanted. He had more than anybody else who had ever existed before him, and he had greater popularity, to renown, greater material assets, more servants and people doing things for him, more women, more everything. And yet we get the impression, at least in Ecclesiastes, that having all those things didn’t actually make him happy. And so it’s very possible that he’s actually describing and contemplating his own kind of biographical experience.
He’s contemplating yet another evil under the sun and this is no pleasant thing. The ESV there says it lies heavy on mankind. The New American Standard, and I give you both of those because I think those are probably the majority, the two primary ones we have in here. The NAS takes a different approach and says that evil, this particular evil is prevalent among men. So the ESV kind of makes it sound like it’s just really bad and weighty and burdensome and heavy and no good. The NAS makes it sound like it’s just happening all the time, like it’s all over the place, this evil. And both of them are true. I think probably based on how the word, how this phrase is used in other places, that idea of heaviness, it being miserable, being exhausting, burdensome, pressing you down.
I think that’s probably the best translation, the best idea, but it’s still true that it’s happening all over the place all of the time. It is prevalent. It’s all over and his contemplation and then leads into a case study in verse 2. Here is his case study, the person situation that he’s reflecting on, a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor. And to what degree does he have these wealth, possessions, honor, all this stuff? Well, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires. Yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. These are people who have it all and don’t enjoy it at all. That is such, in Solomon’s words, an evil, a grievous, burdensome, heavy, painful thing that you can have it all and still have no joy. You can get everything that the world says is what will make you happy.
You can buy everything off of every commercial you ever see that is satisfaction guaranteed. You can buy all those products where your satisfaction is guaranteed. You can have all the warranties in the world. And the fact is there is nothing worse than having it all and yet having absolutely no joy whatsoever. This is, as I’ve said already, the exact opposite of what we saw in verse 19. In verse 19, we see everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions. Here now in chapter 6 verse 2, God gives wealth, possessions, and honor. He’s got even more here in this verse than in the previous paragraph. This is prosperity and position.
This is all of the stuff and all of the people seeing that you have all the stuff and thinking that you’re great. You’ve got the money, you’ve got the materials, you’ve got other people’s esteem and honor. Got it all. Except for one thing, what’s wrong? I mean, this guy has nothing, he’s lacking nothing that he desires. It says it right in verse 2, He’s got all of the wealth, possessions, and honor, so that He lacks nothing that He desires. When He was a kid and He thought about what His life would be when He grows up, He’s got it all. He can check everything off of the list. And yet, God does not give Him power to enjoy them.
The problem is not that this guy dies, and so he can’t enjoy his stuff anymore. The problem is that he can’t even enjoy his stuff while he’s living. It’s not just that somebody else takes them, it’s that he has them at least for a period of time and doesn’t get anything out of it even while he has it. Do you see how the person got his wealth and possessions in honor? This was mind boggling to me the first time I really wrestled with this. A man to whom… Who is the giver here? God Himself is the one who is giving this person all the things he wanted. That just reminds us that God is always in control. God is the one who makes rich.
God is the one who prohibits from being rich. God is the one who gives honor. God is the one who prohibits you from being honored. God is absolutely in control. And here God is in control of this person who has it all, except God does not give him the can opener. From our quote we keep giving from Doug Wilson that these are distinct things. Having the things and having the power to enjoy them are two different gifts. Like a can of peaches and a can opener. And here this guy, God gave him everything except for the can opener. And it’s totally miserable. God gave the power to enjoy them back in verse 19. Chapter 5 verse 19.
Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them. But in chapter 6 verse 2, a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions and honor so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires yet. God does not give him power to enjoy them. This guy only got the can. He got the warehouse full of cans of peaches and no ability to enjoy them. And ultimately then at some point, a stranger is going to enjoy them. Whether that’s while he’s living and he loses it or that’s at the end of his life and somebody else takes over, It doesn’t matter. While he even had control of all of the cans, he could enjoy them, not at all, because God did not give him the power to enjoy them.
I’ve got to admit, I don’t particularly care for that. On one hand, you know why? Because that makes me a total beggar. that scrapes every possible morsel of self-sufficiency off of the plate down the garbage disposal. You have nothing that God did not give you, and any joy you hope to get from any of the things also has to be given by God, which means if you don’t even consider Him, you don’t even look to Him, you’re not even asking and depending on Him, you can’t forget about joy. Just forget about it. God is the one who gives things and God is the one who gives power to enjoy those things. And in and of itself, just looking at life under the sun, the conclusion is, of course from man’s perspective under the sun, somebody who doesn’t want anything to do with a sovereign God, well this is vanity. It is a grievous evil. It’s It’s pitiful.
It’s miserable. It’s unhappy. It’s depressing. It’s hard. It is loathsome. To loathe something is to hate it, to despise it, to get absolutely no joy out of it whatsoever. And here the person has got everything he could ever want. And yet loathes the process, despises it all. It is a grievous, heavy, weighty, burdensome evil that lies on mankind that they are not in charge of their own joy even if they have everything else under the sun. Well, let’s look at the illustration of misery and toil that Solomon gives us in verses 3 through 6. First, we see the condition, if a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things. And he also has no burial. This is all the condition. In ancient Israel, there were a few things that were signs of God’s blessing. One would have been money. People typically saw it as a sign of God’s favor, God’s kindness to somebody. If they had a lot of money, they were wealthy, had many possessions.
But there were a couple other things that people saw as signs of God’s great blessing as well. One was having many children and the other was having a long and healthy life. And so we’ve got the three things here, possessions and family and health. This guy has more stuff than he could want. He’s got more children. This has to be exaggeration. Hyperbole to say, Father’s a hundred children. I mean, that’s crazy, but it’s meant to exaggerate the potential blessing. And then lives many years. Well, how many years are we talking about? Look down at the end of the paragraph in verse 6, even though he should live a thousand years twice over.
That’s a really long way to say 2,000 years. Even if you have health, you live for 2,000 years. Even if you father 100 children and you’ve got all of your wealth, all your possessions, but there’s no joy in the process, that’s miserable. Of all of the things this guy has from the possessions and the position of honor and the family and even the life and the health, he’s missing the Simha. You remember that? The Simha, which is the Hebrew word for joy. There’s totally no joy in this guy’s life whatsoever. Soul is not satisfied with the good things. No power to enjoy that. He even has no burial. I don’t think that Solomon is suggesting that all of his misery in life would have been okay as long as he got a great casket at the end. I don’t think that’s his point. His point is that for all this stuff, nobody really even cares when he dies. Nobody’s even taking care of his body to give him a proper burial. Totally vain and empty. And It gives us a comparison in the second part of verse 3 and verse 4.
As Solomon says, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Life without joy is worse than no life at all.
The picture here of the stillborn or the baby that is born that’s already dead, that doesn’t have any life. I mean, you want to talk about the picture of vanity for all of that to take place and to go through the pains and then to not even have any life. I mean, that’s a wicked kind of comparison. He’s already talked about it a little bit. Look back at chapter 4 verse 2. Solomon says, I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive, better than both is he who has not yet been born and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.” But Solomon is even more explicit here in chapter 6. A life without joy, a life of total misery, is worse than being stillborn. A stillbirth occurs when a fetus in the second or third trimester dies in the womb or during labor or delivery. I mean you can only try to imagine the pain that comes at that point. It’s so unpleasant and horrid that in Psalm 58 the psalmist praised this against his enemies. Look at Psalm
To grow up and to get the job that you want and get the house that you want with the spouse and the kids that you want, to have all of that and yet hate the process, it would have been better for you to not even be born. Now that’s just an amazing comparison. It was a hateful and dreadful wish from the psalmist on his enemies. The preacher says that the stillborn’s fate is preferable over the one who God gives the can of peaches to, but not the can opener. At least it comes in vanity and goes in darkness. It enters life without life. It was a lifeless existence and it will go in darkness as it came without celebration and fanfare.
So it goes without celebration and fanfare. Never had to experience the harshness, never had to experience how difficult it is, which really leads to the culmination in verses 5 and 6. Moreover, it has not seen the Son or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than He. It was spared seeing and experiencing the abuses and pains of life under the Son. never reached consciousness, so it never knew pain. Where wisdom and knowledge increased, so do grief and sorrow. Ecclesiastes 1.18, there was no increase of knowledge because there was no life, so there could be no increase of sorrow and grief. This lifeless child is better off. That is a hard statement. Even though, back to the main character, even Back to the main character, even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good, do not all go to one place.
As he had exaggerated the number of kids to say a hundred, so now he exaggerates the length of life. Adam only lived nine hundred thirty years. Methuselah, who was the oldest guy who ever lived recorded in Scripture, lived nine hundred sixty-nine years. Both of those are recorded for us in Genesis 5. So twice the age of the guy who lived the longest life ever, yet no joy, still gonna die, life then is vanity. What good is long life if there’s no good in your life? If there’s no experience of joy from God, Life is empty and meaningless. The final question in verse 6 is not a question of their eternal destiny. It’s simply a question of reminding us that everybody is going to die.
The one place is not saying that there isn’t a heaven and a hell or that they’re all together. It’s simply referring back to the ground, to dying. Look at chapter 3, verse 20. We had already covered this before. all go to one place. All are from the dust and to the dust all return. And so the physical body returns back to dust and disintegrates. We know from the rest of scripture that there’s more than that, that the eternal part of us does go on forever. But the point here is in considering life under the sun, look, life is hard and then you die. And if there was no joy in the process, if you load the process, that is absolutely miserable.
It’s despicable, it’s hateful. And through the bottom of the barrel here in chapter 6 verses 1 through 6, Solomon paints this nature, I think again, to cut us off from pursuing all of the junk. I mean, this paragraph pleads with you to consider getting your head out of the broken cisterns. It points us away from life under the sun. The only other place to go is beyond the sun, which is to God Himself. And yet, I mean the rest of this day and tomorrow. Maybe not people in here. I doubt that. I think it is going to include many of us as well. But all over our country and really all over the world, will be people trying to find joy and happiness in things that ultimately don’t provide it if God doesn’t provide it.
You know, there are three places that people are looking for satisfaction that Solomon points out here in this paragraph. I’ve already mentioned them. But let me just wrap up the paragraph. People who look for life in money are going to be disappointed because money doesn’t satisfy. You know what? Probably most of us get that. We may not live that, but we at least get that. We understand that. And so what would we talk about? Well, we’ll talk about even if there aren’t lots of presents under the tree, well, at least we’ll be with family. You could have 100 kids and the grandkids that come from that and you can bounce them on your knee or you can be with your spouse or you can be with your parents, you can be with cousins and uncles, and you can be with great grandkids and the whole shooting match. And you know what, if God doesn’t give you joy in that, that’s empty. Family is empty without the gift of God being able to enjoy them. Money doesn’t satisfy. Ultimately, family doesn’t even satisfy.
Oh, well, at least we have our health. Well, and some people don’t even have their health. They have breath. But you know what? You can live 2,000 years. We live in a culture that is desperate to get more years. I was listening to a sermon on this passage last night talking about how all of us are not at the nursing homes with all of the really happy people. Because if living a long life is what really makes people happy, if that’s really where joy is to be found, then shouldn’t we go to the happiest place on earth where all the old people hang out? And of course we know that that’s just not the case. Living long and even living healthily does not satisfy if you’re not looking to God, if you’re not drinking from the living fountain.
Money doesn’t satisfy, family doesn’t satisfy, health doesn’t satisfy. You can have everything that you could possibly want, everything that you have dreamed of in your life, but if really you don’t have God, you don’t depend on Him, you ultimately have nothing and you have missed the point. Satisfaction is not guaranteed under the sun, except in God. Well to finish up, we’ve been talking through this passage on money and wealth and riches, And even this one includes the family and the health idea. But just let me kind of summarize what we’ve said about money so far. There is more to life than money and you can’t take it with you anyway.
Time flies when God gives you joy and toil, but life is miserable if he doesn’t. It’s kind of like a poem, but it’s more like a collection of proverbs on top of each other as the point of each paragraph, the last four. There is more to life than money, and even if life was about money, you don’t get to take it with you, unlike all the pharaohs who had themselves buried with their treasures because they believed that they’d take it with them and yet somehow we find it. You can’t take it with you. There’s only one real positive thing in there and that’s the third line. Time flies when God gives you joy and toil, but it is the worst of the worst if He doesn’t.
And if you’re seeking satisfaction and joy and other things, you’re not going to be enjoying the process. There will be no ETP for you. As you spend some time talking in small groups this morning, please do not try to tell your small group leaders that you don’t think about money and that you don’t think about family and that you don’t think about health and life. You may not be doodling those things all over your journals and your book covers, but But those are the things that dominate all of our lives and that to various degrees or another we’re all pursuing. So just get past that right out of the gate. And there’s no point in trying to cover up your desires for the cisterns.
I’m urging you to consider those and to step aside and to point yourself back in the direction and to drink from the living fountain. It’s only from Him and in Him that you’ll be able to enjoy Christmas or Christmas break or 2007 or anything, any week, any month or any year of your life is looking to God. He is the one who gives gifts. More than that, He is the only one who can give you the power to enjoy life under the sun, and so we need to depend on him. And Father, through your spirit, through your word, do point us back to you. We thank you for Solomon. We are sorry on one hand for the sadness and the despair that Solomon experienced as he tried to pursue life and all all these other things, and yet, we’re thankful for His testimony and for His writing this even to us.
Cut us off from pursuing all those other vain things, and instead, we pray that we would depend on you and love you and worship you, that you might give us power to enjoy whatever you have for us. That is our lot. I pray all this in the name of your Son. Amen.